Saturday, February 15, 2014

Because
of a determined people’s movement, Lynne is finally home with her
family. But she has urgent medical needs and costs. Lynne’s Stage 4
breast cancer spread a year ago to both lungs, back, bones and lymph
nodes. Now 74, she has lost weight and has trouble breathing; doctors
estimate her lifespan at 12 months. Lynne will soon begin treatment
requiring her to pay deductibles and co-payments. To boost the odds,
she’ll use a special diet, vitamins, and other healing methods – some
costly and none covered by insurance.
Lynne’s spirit is indomitable – help her fight to survive!

Tell Maj. Gen. Buchanan why Chelsea deserves to be free!

PVT Chelsea Manning has served nearly four years in prison, yet she’s
showing a remarkable spirit of persistence. She is unjustly imprisoned,
but not defeated. With plans to enroll in a prelaw/political science
university program, and a legal name change underway, she continues
planning for her future and working to fulfill her dreams. She is
determined to make the best of her situation. However, we know she could
contribute more to the world if she was free.Please write a letter to Convening Authority Major General Buchanan today urging him to reduce Chelsea’s sentence!
We began collecting letters to include in PVT Manning’s clemency
packet last fall. We expected that the military would finalize her
record of trial last December, and that she could then submit her
application to Maj. Gen. Buchanan by the end of 2013. Just like so many
times before, however, the military’s process has slowed Chelsea’s
ability to defend her rights. Defense attorney David Coombs now
estimates that it will be at least another month before the clemency
application can be submitted.
Want to make sure decision-makers know why you believe Chelsea
deserves to go free? If you haven’t done so yet, please write a short
letter to Maj. Gen. Buchanan. Hundreds of people have already submitted
letters for us to use, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel
Ellsberg and award-winning author Alice Walker.
As Alice Walker wrote:

Private Manning was the one soldier willing to speak out
against what he thought was wrong. When others silently followed orders,
Manning could not. Pvt. Manning is a humanist, meaning he sees humanity
before nationality, and values human life above all else. When he
released documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, he wanted the American people,
and the world, to judge for themselves if the U.S. military was properly
valuing human life in Iraq and Afghanistan. As taxpayers who fund that
military, we deserve that opportunity.

The South Korean Rail Strike and the Suppression of Unions Forum and Discussion Sunday, February 16th, 2pm

On
December 22, 2013, the right-wing government of Park Geun-hye illegally
attacked the offices of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU)
with 5,000 police and military troops. The government was attempting to
arrest the leaders of the Korean Rail Workers Union (KRWU), which waged
the longest rail strike in South Korean history to stop the
privatization of the railways.

The South Korean Consulate in San
Francisco organized conservative Koreans to disrupt a solidarity
demonstration for the KRWU on January 17th , 2014.

Another rally is planned for February 25th in front of the Consulate at 4pm.

Across the state, renters face unfair evictions by real estate
speculators, rising rents, and slumlords that won’t make repairs. Now
more than ever, renters need relief. On February 18, 2014, renters and
allies will unite in Sacramento for a march on the Capitol to demand a
fair shake for California renters.

The landlord is appealing the supendition of the demolition perment they
want to use to evict almost 100 tenants at 1049 Market. Come support
these tenants.

Article with a little background on the tenants. (though some of the info on the case is out of date)

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Friday – Saturday Feb. 21-22: San Francisco, CA

“Grounds for Dissent”A Pop-Up GI CoffeehouseLocation:
Veterans Community Media Center
1720 Market St. San Francisco CA
We invite you to join us in launching “Grounds for Dissent, a Pop-Up GI Coffeehouse.”
This Coffeehouse will be ours to build and enjoy for just the one
weekend, but hopefully it will also be fertile grounds for us to grow
deeper roots to invigorate and celebrate not just the Coffeehouse
Movement but our common concerns, larger connections and commitments.Tentative ScheduleFriday February 21st:6 pm: West Coast GI Coffeehouse tour presents, Join
Coffee Strong, Under the Hood, and Clearing Barrel to hear about their
work supporting soldiers, military communities, and GI resistance in
Washington, Texas, and Germany7-10 pm: Anti-militarist dance party–Food, drinks, meet and mingle with members of the GI coffeehouse tourSaturday, February 22nd:Morning: Youth-led theater of the oppressed workshop.
Join BAY PEACE (Better Alternatives for Youth) as they help us imagine a
world without militarism. Afternoon: Warrior Writers Workshop with
Aaron Hughes5:00 pm: Panel Discussion “Enrooting Spaces of Resistance”7-10 pm: Performances and Open Mic
http://gicoffeehousetour.org/

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Bay
Area United Against War Newsletter

Table
of Contents:

A.
ARTICLES IN FULL

B.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS

C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS

D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.

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A.
ARTICLES IN FULL

(Unless
otherwise noted)

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1) Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms
"It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes
were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not."

One
of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done,
involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful
new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age.

It
found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were
the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the
screening had harms: One in five cancers found with mammography and
treated was not a threat to the woman’s health and did not need
treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.

The study,
published Tuesday in The British Medical Journal, is one of the few
rigorous evaluations of mammograms conducted in the modern era of more
effective breast cancer treatments. It randomly assigned Canadian women
to have regular mammograms and breast exams by trained nurses or to have
breast exams alone.

The study seems likely to lead to an even
deeper polarization between those who believe that regular mammography
saves lives, including many breast cancer patients and advocates for
them, and a growing number of researchers who say the evidence is
lacking or, at the very least, murky.

“It will make women
uncomfortable, and they should be uncomfortable,” said Dr. Russell P.
Harris, a screening expert and professor of medicine at the University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the study. “The
decision to have a mammogram should not be a slam dunk.”

The
findings will not lead to any immediate change in guidelines for
mammography, and many advocates and experts will almost certainly
dispute the idea that mammograms are on balance useless, or even
harmful.

Dr. Richard C. Wender, chief of cancer control for the
American Cancer Society, said the society had convened an expert panel
that was reviewing all studies on mammography, including the Canadian
one, and would issue revised guidelines later this year. He added that
combined data from clinical trials of mammography showed it reduces the
death rate from breast cancer by at least 15 percent for women in their
40s and by at least 20 percent for older women.

That means that
one woman in 1,000 who starts screening in her 40s, two who start in
their 50s and three who start in their 60s will avoid a breast cancer
death, Dr. Harris said.Dr. Wender added that while improved treatments
clearly helped lower the breast cancer death rate, so did mammography,
by catching cancers early.

But an editorial
accompanying the new study said that earlier studies that found
mammograms helped women were done before the routine use of drugs like tamoxifen
that sharply reduced the breast cancer death rate. In addition, many
studies did not use the gold-standard methods of the clinical trial,
randomly assigning women to be screened or not, noted the editorial’s
author, Dr. Mette Kalager, and other experts.

Dr. Kalager, an
epidemiologist and screening researcher at the University of Oslo and
the Harvard School of Public Health, said there was a reason the results
were unlike those of earlier studies. With better treatments, like
tamoxifen, it was less important to find cancers early. Also, she said,
women in the Canadian study were aware of breast cancer and its dangers,
unlike women in earlier studies who were more likely to ignore lumps.

“It might be possible that mammography screening would work if you don’t have any awareness of the disease,” she said.

The
Canadian study reached the same conclusion about the lack of a benefit
from mammograms after 11 to 16 years of follow-up, but some experts
predicted that as time went on the advantages would emerge.

That
did not happen, but with more time the researchers could, for the first
time, calculate the extent of overdiagnosis, finding cancers that would
never have killed the women but that led to treatments that included
surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Many cancers, researchers
now recognize, grow slowly, or not at all, and do not require treatment.
Some cancers even shrink or disappear on their own. But once cancer is
detected, it is impossible to know if it is dangerous, so doctors treat
them all.

If the researchers also included a precancerous condition called ductal carcinoma in situ,
the overdiagnosis rate would be closer to one in three cancers, said
Dr. Anthony B. Miller of the University of Toronto, the lead author of
the paper. Ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S., is found only with
mammography, is confined to the milk duct and may or may not break out
into the breast. But it is usually treated with surgery, including mastectomy, or removal of the breast.

Mammography’s benefits have long been debated, but no nations except Switzerland have suggested the screening be halted. In a recent report,
the Swiss Medical Board, an expert panel established by regional
ministers of public health, advised that no new mammography programs be
started in that country and that those in existence have a limited,
though unspecified, duration. Ten of 26 Swiss cantons, or districts,
have regular mammography screening programs.

Dr. Peter Juni, a
member of the Swiss Medical Board until recently, said one concern was
that mammography was not reducing the overall death rate from the
disease, but increasing overdiagnosis and leading to false positives and
needless biopsies.

“The mammography story is just not such an easy story,” said Dr. Juni, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Bern.

Even
experts like Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at
Dartmouth, who have questioned mammography’s benefits were surprised by
Switzerland’s steps to reconsider its widespread use.

“Wow, times they are a-changin’,” Dr. Welch said.

In the United States, about 37 million mammograms are performed annually at a cost of about $100 per mammogram. Nearly
three-quarters of women age 40 and over say they had a mammogram in the
past year. More than 90 percent of women ages 50 to 69 in several
European countries have had at least one mammogram.

Dr. Kalager, whose editorial accompanying the study was titled “Too Much Mammography,” compared mammography to prostate-specific antigen screening for prostate cancer,
using data from pooled analyses of clinical trials. It turned out that
the two screening tests were almost identical in their overdiagnosis
rate and had almost the same slight reduction in breast or prostate
deaths.

“I was very surprised,” Dr. Kalager said. She had assumed
that the evidence for mammography must be stronger since most countries
support mammography screening and most discourage PSA screening.

HAVANA
— In the splendid neighborhoods of this dilapidated city, old mansions
are being upgraded with imported tile. Businessmen go out for sushi and
drive home in plush Audis. Now, hoping to keep up, the government is
erecting something special for its own: a housing development called
Project Granma, featuring hundreds of comfortable apartments in a gated
complex set to have its own movie theater and schools.

“Twenty
years ago, what we earned was a good salary,” said Roberto Rodríguez,
51, a longtime Interior Ministry official among the first to move in.
“But the world has changed.”Cuba is in transition. The economic
overhauls of the past few years have rattled the established order of
class and status, enabling Cubans with small businesses or access to
foreign capital to rise above many dutiful Communists. As these new
paths to prestige expand, challenging the old system of rewards for
obedience, President Raúl Castro is redoubling efforts to elevate the
faithful and maintain their loyalty — now and after the Castros are
gone.Project Granma and similar “military cities” around the country are
Caribbean-color edifices of reassurance, set aside for the most ardent
defenders of Cuba’s 1959 revolution: families tied to the military and
the Interior Ministry. With their balconies, air-conditioning and fresh
paint, the new apartments are the government’s most public gifts to its
middle ranks and a clear sign of Cuba’s new hybrid economy, in which the
state must sometimes compete with private enterprise.

The
housing is just one example of the military’s expansive role in Mr.
Castro’s plan for Cuba, and it illustrates a central conflict in his
attempts to open up the economy without dismantling the power structure
he and his comrades have been building for more than five decades.

In
the short term, analysts and former officers say, he is relying on the
military to push through changes and maintain stability as he
experiments with economic liberalization. Yet his abiding dedication as a
lifelong soldier who was defense minister for 49 years threatens to
further entrench an institution that has often undermined changes
challenging its favored status.

“Raúl knows the military answer
is not the answer, but he also knows that at this time he absolutely
needs military loyalty,” said Hal Klepak, a Canadian scholar who closely
tracks the Cuban military. “They are the only ones who will follow him
if the reform succeeds, or if it fails.”
Launch
media viewer Apartments at a new housing development in Havana called
Project Granma are for loyal Communists, families tied to the military
and the interior ministry. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Mr.
Castro and his brother, Fidel, given their guerrilla history, have
always turned to the military in times of need. In the 1960s and early
’70s, as Cuba’s professional class fled, officers in fatigues ran
government ministries and nationalized industries. Since the 1990s,
after the fall of the Soviet Union, the armed forces have been slashed
to around 55,000, from a peak of more than 200,000, but they have also
been pushed further into the Cuban economy.

As president, Raúl
Castro, 82, has accelerated the growth of what some scholars have
described as a military oligarchy. The chairman of the Economic Policy
Commission, Marino Murillo, is a former officer. Cuba’s largest state
conglomerate, Cimex, which processes remittances from Cubans abroad,
among other tasks, is run by Col. Héctor Oroza Busutin. Raúl Castro’s
son-in-law, Gen. Luis Alberto Rodríguez, is the top executive at the
military’s holding company, known as Gaesa, which is estimated to control 20 percent to 40 percent of the Cuban economy.And its role is expanding. In 2011, a financial arm of the company bought out
Telecom Italia’s 27 percent stake in Cuba’s telecommunications company
for $706 million. Gaesa also has a network of hundreds of retail stores
selling everything from food to appliances. It is a growing force in
tourism, too, controlling fleets of luxury buses, a small airline and an
expanding list of hotels. And one of its subsidiaries is overseeing the
free-trade zone built alongside Cuba’s largest infrastructure project in decades — the new container port in Mariel.

The
military’s interests bestow the privileges of business on a chosen few,
especially senior military officials. “They live better than almost
anyone in Cuba,” said Brian Latell, a former C.I.A. officer who worked
in Cuba.
Launch
media viewer A resident of Project Granma in Havana tends to his garden
outside his apartment. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

But in
the lower and middle ranks, experts say, esteem and relative wealth have
eroded. Career officers in Cuba are now more likely to have friends or
relatives who live abroad, or who visit Miami and often return with
iPhones or new clothes unavailable at the state’s musty stores.

Meanwhile,
military members must report all remittances they receive, and they are
not allowed any “unauthorized contact” with foreigners or Cubans living
abroad — limiting access to the money that other Cubans use not just
for purchases, but also to improve their homes and open small
businesses.

“It’s producing an exodus of talented people from the
state to the private sector,” said Jorge Dámaso, 75, a retired colonel
who writes a blog
often critical of the government. “Most people in the military have
seen their quality of life fall compared to a bartender or someone who
has a small business. They can see that they are at a disadvantage.”

The
new housing, a basic necessity in extremely short supply across the
island, looks to many Cubans like another attempt at favoritism.
According to government figures,
the military’s construction budget has more than doubled since 2010.
When combined with the Interior Ministry (often described as a branch of
the military), the armed forces are now Cuba’s second-largest
construction entity.
Launch media viewer Project Granma looks to many Cubans like another attempt at favoritism.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times Project Granma — named after the boat
Fidel Castro took from Mexico to Cuba to start the revolution — is one
of several new military housing developments
around the country. Its equivalent in Santiago de Cuba, where the
Castro revolution began, has come under fire from Cubans struggling in rickety homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
But as an attempt to match the private sector, or life in other
countries, it is perhaps no accident that the colors and architecture of
the Granma, in the same neighborhood that Raúl Castro calls home, give
it the feel of a Florida condo complex.

At its edge, there is a
baseball field. Inside the gates, streetlamps resembling classic
gaslights line the sidewalks, while cars, another perk, fill lots.

At
a building with rounded archways, where a movie theater, market and
health clinic are meant to go, one of the project’s engineers said
several thousand people would eventually call Granma home. Sweating in
green army fatigues, he praised the plan, noting its imported,
prefabricated design that allowed walls to be assembled quickly, like
puzzle pieces. He failed to mention what a security guard had pointed
out: Most of the workers painting were prison inmates.

Several
residents said they were thrilled to live in what Mario Coyula, Havana’s
former director of urbanism and architecture, called “the first gated
community in Cuba since the 1950s.” Some said they had been living in
cramped quarters with generations of family.

Support for Raúl
Castro’s economic changes seemed strong here among those willing to
talk. “It’s necessary,” Mr. Rodríguez, the official among the first to
arrive at Granma, said as he sat outside with a cigarette. “If you’re
cold, you put on a coat; it’s just what makes sense.”

But in the
push and pull that has defined Cuba’s economic policies over the last
two years, the government has often struggled with when to let the
market function and when to protect the Communist establishment. The
authorities, for example, recently cracked down on private vendors
selling clothes and other items, widely seen as an effort to help the
state’s own retail network.

Mr. Dámaso, who spent 32 years in the
military, said that the country’s leaders, while longing for economic
improvement, mainly want to preserve the Cuba they know.

“If you
have a business run by military officers, when there’s a transition,
you’re not going to get rid of all these people,” he said. “This is a
way to maintain a space for established powers in a future Cuban
society.”

WASHINGTON
— A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that judges had the power to
oversee complaints by detainees about the conditions of their
confinement at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The ruling
was a defeat for the Obama administration and may open the door to new
lawsuits by the remaining 155 Guantánamo inmates.

In a two-to-one
decision, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit held that courts may oversee conditions at
the prison as part of a habeas corpus lawsuit. The ruling overturned
lower court decisions that judges could not oversee such matters.

At
the same time, the court rejected a request by three detainees on a
hunger strike at Guantánamo for an injunction barring the government
from force-feeding them by strapping them into a restraint chair,
inserting a gastric tube through their noses and pouring a liquid
nutritional supplement into their stomachs.

Judge David S. Tatel
wrote that “absent exceptional circumstances prison officials may
force-feed a starving inmate actually facing the risk of death.” He
added, “Petitioners point to nothing specific to their situation that
would give us a basis for concluding that the government’s legitimate
penological interests cannot justify the force-feeding of
hunger-striking detainees at Guantánamo.”

Still, because the
majority concluded that the judiciary had the authority to review such
claims, it sent the case back to Federal District Court for further
consideration.

Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer for the prisoners,
celebrated the larger reach of the ruling as a “huge win” for those
seeking greater judicial oversight of how the military treats detainees.

“This
decision establishes that the federal courts have the power to stop the
mistreatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay,” Mr. Eisenberg said. “The
Court of Appeals has given us the green light to continue our challenge
to the detainees’ force-feeding as being unconstitutionally abusive. We
intend to do that.”

Among other things, he added, the government,
after the Oct. 18 oral arguments in the case, revised its procedures
for using restraint chairs in the force-feeding, but has declined to let
the detainees’ lawyers review those guidelines. The ruling, he said,
“gives us the green light to ask the district court to order such
disclosure.”

If
the case stands — the Justice Department could file an appeal asking
the full appeals court or the Supreme Court to review it — it would be a
milestone in a long-running legal battle, involving all three branches
of government, over the extent to which detainees are entitled to
judicial review if they are being indefinitely detained without trial at
the prison.

The Bush administration initially argued that courts
had no jurisdiction over foreigners held at the prison, which is on
Cuban soil. In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that courts did have
jurisdiction to hear detainees’ lawsuits.

In 2005, Congress
enacted a law stripping courts of the power to hear such claims. The
following year, the Supreme Court — in a case involving military
commissions — ruled that the law only applied to future lawsuits.

Congress
responded by passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which barred
courts from hearing both existing and future lawsuits by detainees. Two
years later, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees nevertheless could
bring habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the factual basis for their
detention as accused enemy combatants.

That left open the
question of whether they could bring cases involving unrelated
complaints over the conditions of confinement. Lower courts said they
could not, and the Obama administration agreed. But in the force-feeding
case, two of the three judges on the panel said they could bring such
cases because conditions were a subset of habeas corpus cases.

Moreover,
Judge Tatel wrote, if a judge ordered the military to stop treating a
detainee in some “unlawful manner,” and it did not rectify the
conditions, the court said judges may then “simply order the prisoner
released.”

Judge Tatel, who was appointed by President Bill
Clinton, was joined by Judge Thomas B. Griffith, who was appointed by
President George W. Bush. The third judge on the panel, Judge Stephen F.
Williams, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and took senior
status in 2001, disagreed. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Williams said
his colleagues should have followed Congress’s intentions and dismissed
the case.

Congress “unmistakably sought to prevent the federal
courts from entertaining claims based on detainees’ conditions of
confinement,” he wrote. “Such evident congressional intent would seem to
counsel a cautious rather than a bravura reading” of whether such
claims fell into the category of habeas corpus lawsuits.

Those who lost sufficient weight were forced to eat a nutritional supplement, a practice that revived complaints by medical ethics groups that doctors should not force-feed prisoners who decide not to eat. A similar debate erupted during the Bush administration.

Four detainees filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the military from force-feeding them. One was later transferred to Algeria, but three — Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen and former resident of Britain; Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian; and Abu Dhiab,
a Syrian, remain at Guantánamo. All had been approved for transfer, if
security conditions could be met in the receiving country, by a 2009-10
task force.

The hunger strike dwindled in the last six months of 2013, and in December the United Sates Southern Command stopped reporting the daily count
of hunger strikers. Mr. Eisenberg, who recently visited his clients,
said he was told that there were 25 detainees still on hunger strikes,
with 16 of them being force-fed. A military spokesman declined to
confirm or deny that count.

TUCSON
— “My record is 30 minutes,” Magistrate Judge Bernardo P. Velasco of
Federal District Court here said one afternoon, describing the speed
with which he had sealed the fates of 70 migrants caught sneaking into
the country. Each of the accused had 25 seconds, give or take, to hear
the charges against him, enter a plea and receive a sentence.

This
is a part of the battle against illegal immigration that many Americans
have never heard of. Known as Operation Streamline, it is the core of a
federal program that operates in three border states, using prosecution
and imprisonment as a front-line deterrent to people who try to cross
the border illegally. It is part of a broader strategy of increasing the consequences for people who break immigration laws.

Unlike
the civil immigration courts spread throughout the country, where
deportation cases are handled as violations of the nation’s
administrative code, the courts used for Operation Streamline treat
unauthorized immigrants as criminals and the act of illegally crossing
the border as a federal crime.

Men and women arrested along the
border, the chains around their ankles and wrists jingling as they move,
are gathered to answer to the same charges — illegal entry, a
misdemeanor, and illegal re-entry, a felony. They have not had an
opportunity to bathe since they set off to cross the desert; the
courtroom has the smell of sweaty clothes left for days in a plastic
bag. Side by side in groups of seven as they face the bench, they
consistently plead guilty to a lesser charge, which spares them longer
time behind bars. The immigration charge is often their only offense.

“As
ugly as some people think it is, it’s a bargain for the defendants,”
Judge Velasco said in an interview in his chambers. “What we do is
constitutional, it satisfies due process. It may not look good, but it
does everything the law requires.”

Nonetheless, the mass
deportations have led to accusations of assembly-line justice. The
program began under President George W. Bush, but it has grown under
President Obama, underscoring the aggressive way with which his
administration has pursued deportations, which reached 1.9 million in
December, a record for an American president.

In Tucson, the
proceedings start promptly at 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, except
for federal holidays, and end whenever the presiding judge — there is a
different one each week — gets through all the defendants, a maximum of
70 here because that is as many as the court’s cells can hold. (If Judge
Velasco is the fastest, Magistrate Judge Charles R. Pyle is known for
taking the longest — two hours and 35 minutes for 70 defendants last
week.)

“The whole thing is basically about meeting the minimum
requirements so as not to violate your rights,” Saúl M. Huerta, a lawyer
hired by the government at $110 an hour to represent the migrants, said
in an interview.

Sentences range from 30 days to six months and
are served in federal prisons, county jails and private detention
centers that operate under contract with the government. Keeping the
migrants from their families and the possibility of jobs to sustain them
is one part penalty, one part incentive for them not to try to come
back. (An illegal re-entry conviction carries a maximum of two years in
prison, but it can be up to 20 years if the migrant has been deported
before and has an aggravated-felony conviction.)

With the House
speaker, John A. Boehner, predicting that there will be no immigration
overhaul legislation this year, Operation Streamline seems likely to
keep a central role in the federal government’s border-enforcement
strategy. A comprehensive bill
approved by the Senate last June called for tripling the size of the
program in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, where it started in 2008,
to 210 migrants a day from 70, even if its effectiveness has been
difficult to prove.While in its early years the program here included
migrants caught crossing the border for the first time, almost everyone
prosecuted under it these days is a repeat offender. For the migrants,
reassurance comes in the form of a pat in the back or a squeeze on the
shoulder from their lawyers, who then pump hand sanitizer from one of
the dozen bottles visible in court.

Last week, at a soup kitchen
in Nogales, Mexico, where deported migrants gather for breakfast, Efrain
Alejandro, 32, who had just served his second sentence in two years
under Operation Streamline, was already plotting his return.

“I
have no family left in Mexico,” said Mr. Alejandro, describing his
surrender to Border Patrol agents after three days lost in the desert,
abandoned by the smuggler who had been guiding his group. “There’s no
other option for me.”

An analysis released in May by the Congressional Research Service found
that the recidivism rate among migrants deported under Operation
Streamline in the 2012 fiscal year was 10 percent, compared with a rate
of 27 percent for migrants who agreed to a voluntary return, thus
avoiding prosecution. In the previous year, recidivism rates of both
deportation programs were 12 percent and 29 percent, according to the
analysis, which was based on fingerprints gathered from migrants
apprehended at the border.

“This is the hardest evidence we have
suggesting that Streamline has had more of a deterrent effect than
putting people on a bus and sending them back to Mexico,” said Edward
Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has
studied the effects of border enforcement on migration.

But Mr.
Alden cautioned: “How strong? It’s impossible at this point to tell.”
The issue, he said, is the limited amount of statistics the federal
government has made available.

About 209,000 people were
processed under Operation Streamline from 2005, when the program began
in Del Rio, Tex., to the end of the 2012 fiscal year, constituting about
45 percent of the 463,000 immigration-related prosecutions carried out
in the Border Patrol’s Southwestern districts, the analysis found.

During
this time, apprehensions along the border fell by 61 percent, and the
proportion of migrants deported through some type of court program, like
Streamline, increased to 86 percent, from 23 percent in 2005.

Stepping
up prosecutions is “a fairly standard law enforcement response if
there’s a concern about lawbreaking and the current measures aren’t
working,” said David A. Martin,
a professor of law at the University of Virginia and a former general
counsel at the Department of Homeland Security who was part of the Obama
administration’s push to change deportation priorities.

As a result, “illegal re-entry” ranked as the top immigration charge
in federal district courts over the last five years, according to
statistics compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a
research organization at Syracuse University.

In Tucson, 73,900
people were prosecuted under Operation Streamline from Jan. 1, 2008 to
Dec. 31, statistics from the Mexican Consulate here show. For its part,
the Border Patrol, which releases statistics by fiscal year, apprehended about 818,000 migrants in the Tucson Sector from Oct. 1, 2008 to Sept. 30, 2013.

Ricardo
Pineda Albarrán, the Mexican consul here, dispatches a person to court
each day to track the fate of the defendants, mostly Mexican men, and a
rotating cast of up to 10 other workers to keep their families informed,
wherever they are.

“We respect the process; the United States is
a sovereign country,” Mr. Albarrán said in Spanish. “But compressing a
decision about someone’s future in a minutes, seconds, when the
circumstances of each case are so different, has a devastating social
and human impact.” And that happens, he said, “on both sides of the
border.”

It
seems logical: College graduates have lower unemployment and earn more
than less educated workers, so, the thinking goes, the fix for today’s
anemic growth in jobs and wages is to make sure that more people earn
college degrees. But that’s a common misperception, deflecting attention
from the serious work that has to be done to create jobs and improve
incomes.

A college education remains a path to more stable, higher-paying employment. The recent jobless rate
for college graduates ages 25 and older was 3.2 percent, and their
median pay at full-time, full-year jobs was $75,300 for men and $53,700
for women. That is a far lower rate of joblessness and a far higher pay
level than for high school graduates and people without high school
diplomas.

But that doesn’t mean that enough good jobs are, or
will be, available for college graduates. Though joblessness for college
graduates ages 25 and older looks tame, the jobless rate for those
under 25 averaged 8.2 percent in 2013, compared with 8 percent in 2012
and 5.4 in 2007, before the Great Recession hit in full force.

Recent
graduates also face rising underemployment, meaning that they work in
jobs that typically do not require bachelor’s degrees. According to new
research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
the rise in underemployment for graduates ages 22 to 27 never fully
retreated after the recessions of 2001 and 2007-9; in 2012, it was a
dismal 44 percent for that age group, compared with a steady
underemployment rate of 33 percent for college graduates as a whole over
the past two decades.

Pay, meanwhile, has stagnated for
college-educated workers over the past 12 years. That’s better than
declining, as has been the case for less-educated workers. But it also
shows that a college education, in and of itself, does not create good
jobs at good pay. For that, a thriving economy is essential — including
consistent pro-employment policies and investments by business and
government.

Right now, the outlook for more good jobs at good pay is not good. According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
of the 20 occupations expected to add the most new jobs from 2012 to
2022, only one — general and operations management — requires a
bachelor’s degree. It also pays well — the median salary in 2012 was
$95,440. Most of the other big-growth occupations offered very low or
moderate pay, with the biggest growth areas generally being the worst
paying, including home health care, retail sales and food service.

The
bureau also ranked the occupations that are expected to grow the
fastest from 2012 to 2022. Of the top 20, seven require a bachelor’s
degree or higher, including jobs as interpreters, information security
analysts and health care professionals; median pay for those jobs in
2012 ranged from $45,430 for interpreters to $90,930 for physician
assistants. Of the 13 fast-growing jobs that do not require a degree,
most are in health care or building trades, with typical annual pay of
about $20,000 to $30,000.

All of which means that a major
challenge for policy makers and business leaders is to confront the
obvious: that most new jobs are likely to be lower-wage jobs. That
requires plans for creating pathways from low-wage work to better-paying
jobs, say from home health aide to vocational nurse, as well as
strategies to foster the development of higher-paying industries. The
situation also demands support for policies and institutions that lift
wages, including a robust minimum wage and unions.

On its own, more college won’t change the economy’s low-wage trajectory.

NEW
ORLEANS — C. Ray Nagin, a former corporate executive who became mayor
in 2002 pledging to modernize city government and instead became an
emblem of government dysfunction in the months and years after Hurricane
Katrina, was found guilty in federal court on Wednesday on 20 counts of
bribery and fraud.

The verdict marks a dubious milestone in a
city long associated with an ethically loose style of politics: It makes
Mr. Nagin the first New Orleans mayor to be charged, tried and
convicted of corruption.

He was found guilty of all but one of 21
counts, including bribery, wire fraud and filing false tax returns.
Sentencing has been set for June 11, Mr. Nagin’s 58th birthday. Mr.
Nagin could face 20 years in prison by federal sentencing guidelines,
said Tania Tetlow, a Tulane University law professor and a former
federal prosecutor.

On his walk out of the courtroom and across
chilly Lafayette Square to his lawyer’s office, Mr. Nagin, who will be
confined to his home near Dallas for now, kept up a stoic demeanor in
the middle of a swarm of cameras. He told reporters he maintained his
innocence, and his lawyer, Robert Jenkins, said Mr. Nagin intended to
appeal.

Over the eight-day trial, federal prosecutors and more
than two dozen government witnesses had described Mr. Nagin’s
involvement in a series of roughly similar schemes: city projects would
be awarded to — or municipal problems fixed for — businessmen who in
turn would give Mr. Nagin large payments, private trips to Jamaica and
New York, free cellphone service, lawn care, do-nothing consulting jobs
or free shipments of granite for the countertop company he ran with his
two sons.

Much of this was known to New Orleans residents
through reports in the local news media during his second term and later
through the guilty pleas and criminal trials of others involved in the
schemes, several of whom were government witnesses.

Mr. Nagin,
who testified over two days, had claimed that he had little control over
the contracting process, and described some of the payoffs as
legitimate investments in his sons’ business. In one case involving a
contractor’s $10,000 payment to Mr. Nagin’s sons, the jury agreed with
Mr. Nagin. But they sided with the government on the rest — a total of
illicit proceeds that the government put at half a million dollars.

“Our
public servants pledge to provide honest services to the people of
Southeast Louisiana,” said Kenneth Allen Polite Jr., the United States
attorney for Louisiana’s Eastern District, in a statement after the
verdict. “We are committed to bringing any politician who violates that
obligation to justice.”

Mr. Nagin was elected in 2002 as an
outsider dismissive of the old political machines. A cable TV executive
with no prior governing experience, Mr. Nagin, a Democrat, was impatient
with the stubborn rhythm of the city’s bureaucracy, a quality that
endeared him to the media, reform advocates and upscale voters.

Of
the city’s airport, he said in his first campaign that the city should
“sell that sucker,” and many applauded his moxie. That he turned out to
be much more adept at proposing big ideas than following through with
them was something he acknowledged, and it became one of the qualities
that most infuriated New Orleanians in the years following Katrina.

During
his time on the witness stand, Mr. Nagin brought up Katrina several
times, talking about how much work there was to be done in the recovery,
how demanding his job was and how much pressure was put on the daily
business of the city. But prosecutors turned this around, asking Mr.
Nagin how he could eat expensive meals on the city credit card, or help a
businessman get rid of steep tax bills in return for a trip on a
private jet, when residents were hurting so badly. They also pointed out
that some of the schemes predated the storm and continued after he left
office in 2010.Gary Clark, a political science professor at Dillard
University in New Orleans, who as a Civil Service commissioner dealt
with the mayor, dismissed any notion that the mayor did not know what he
was doing.

“He’s a shrewd tactician,” he said of Mr. Nagin,
pointing out how adeptly he had shifted from a largely white
constituency in 2002 to largely black one in 2006. “You don’t win the
mayorship of New Orleans by being naïve.” Still, the inattention to
detail for which Mr. Nagin was known seemed to form a part of his
defense at trial.

From the witness stand, he testified that the
extensive paper trail on which much of the case rested — calendar
entries, tax filings, legal documents and city paperwork — was mostly
handled by others, like accountants or assistants. His lawyer asked
whether a person taking bribes would really be so careless as to leave
such a record, behavior that brazenly flouts the wisdom shared by a
former Louisiana governor, Earl K. Long: that one should never put in
writing what one can convey in a smile, a nod or a wink.

Those who knew him say it is unsurprising.

“I
think he may have been reckless,” said Oliver Thomas, a city councilman
during Mr. Nagin’s term who pleaded guilty to taking a bribe in 2007.

Mr.
Thomas raised a sentiment common among those who knew Mr. Nagin. While
he may have been guilty of the charges, Mr. Thomas said, and may have
known that his actions were against the law, Mr. Nagin may still
question whether he truly did anything wrong.

Having spoken from
the witness stand about a “300 percent cut in salary” when he left the
private sector, some said Mr. Nagin may have preferred to maintain the
lifestyle he had enjoyed in the corporate world.

“I think when he
went into the government sector he could not remove his private
sensibilities,” said Andre Perry, an activist and professor who was
involved in public education issues during Mr. Nagin’s second term. “You
just can’t do the things you did” in the private sector, he said.

NAHORANI
TEA ESTATE, India — For a century and a half, Madhu Munda’s forebears
toiled on the same tea plantation that she lives and works on now.
Belonging to central Indian tribes brought to what is now the
northeastern state of Assam by the British in the mid-19th century, they
and millions of other plantation workers survived as little more than
indentured servants, even as the British Raj gave way to Indian
democracy.

So when Amalgamated Plantations took over the
plantation in 2008, Ms. Munda and her fellow workers had high hopes for
change. The company’s investors said they planned to transform this
sprawling tea estate into a model for sustainable and responsible labor
policy through an employee shareholding program. The International
Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank partly funded by the
United States government, lent the new company legitimacy with a sizable
investment. In approving funding, the International Finance Corporation
stated that Amalgamated promised to “create opportunities for people to
escape poverty and improve their lives.”

But that early optimism
has evaporated. Despite pledges of better working and living
conditions, Ms. Munda, 45, finds herself living a life not dissimilar to
that of her grandparents. Her family shares a cramped and crumbling
house with three other families. The well outside is filled with murky
water, and a nearby latrine is rank and overflowing. Ms. Munda says she
has been emptying a bucket filled with the water that leaks through her
roof for 15 monsoon seasons.

In interviews at two of the
company’s plantations, workers said their overseers treated them harshly
and denied them basic benefits. Ms. Munda said that to qualify for a
paid sick day, workers had to report to the plantation clinic three
times a day to prove their illness. Raju Mantra, the son of two
plantation workers, said that protective equipment was withheld from
workers.

“When big people come to visit, they give it to us,” he
said of equipment like gloves and masks to protect from pesticides, “but
then they put it back in storage, saying that if we wear it every day,
it will wear out.”

On Monday, the Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School released a 110-page report on Amalgamated’s operations, which employ more than 30,000 people on 24 plantations in Assam and neighboring West Bengal.

The
report paints a grim portrait of life on the tea plantation:
dilapidated and crowded housing, hazardous water and sanitation
conditions, the denial of basic benefits like health care for workers’
dependents, widespread disregard for occupational safety measures, and
pitifully low wages.

Amalgamated denies any wrongdoing. The
company claims it was not given enough time to fully review the Columbia
report before its release. But it issued a statement saying that the
report was “incorrect and misleading in some parts,” and said that some
issues, like wages, were dictated by an industrywide recession that
necessitated conservative spending.

Amalgamated’s oceanic
plantations of undulating green tea bushes employ thousands of workers
each. The plantations used to be owned by the Tata Group, a vast Indian
conglomerate that, along with the International Finance Corporation,
created Amalgamated during a restructuring process in the late 2000s.
Now, Amalgamated provides tea leaves primarily to Tata Global Beverages,
whose Tetley and other brands of tea are widely consumed across the
world. Assam’s almost 1,000 plantations produce around one-sixth of the
world’s tea.

On Tuesday, the International Finance Corporation’s internal compliance and accountability office announced
that it would be conducting a full investigation into the “I.F.C.’s
environmental and social performance in relation to its investment in
A.P.P.L.,” the abbreviation for Amalgamated.

In an email response
to questions, Amalgamated’s spokesman said the allegations made by
workers on the company’s plantations were untrue. The company said it
adhered strictly to the Plantations Labor Act, an Indian law that
requires plantation owners to supplement wages, which can be set below
state minimums, by providing tea workers with housing, schools, health
care and other basic needs.

Tea worker’s rights groups say the
Plantations Labor Act has perpetuated the feudal system created by
British companies when they first developed the plantations. Today’s
plantation workers descend almost exclusively from tribal populations
transplanted in the colonial era, having inherited jobs from their
parents. The manual labor they perform has changed little in 150 years.
Last December, women in saris moved slowly down the rows of bushes,
pruning them with machetes.

Workers said managers treated them
with contempt. A group of women at one plantation said their supervisors
used language with them so vulgar they could not repeat it. Mr. Mantra
later said that local stereotypes of tribal people as promiscuous figure
heavily in taunts, and workers who show up late are sometimes asked,
“Were you having sex all night, and that’s why you’re late?”

The Columbia report said that management warned researchers not to trust workers because they were “just like cattle.”

Leaving
the plantations is only a vague dream for most. Local advocacy groups
say schools on plantations go up to only the fourth grade, and in some
schools, there are up to 250 students for each teacher. Most tea workers
remain illiterate, the advocates say. Beyond the fences of Assam’s
plantations, where tea workers seldom go, there is little demand for
unskilled labor.

The poverty that besieges tribal populations
throughout India more harshly circumscribes mobility for those on
Assam’s plantations. Many here said they would like to continue going to
school or seek care at hospitals outside their plantations, but
transportation is too costly for those who earn so little. Plantation
workers like Ms. Munda can make 89 rupees ($1.43) a day picking tea
leaves or performing other tasks, provided they meet their productivity
quotas. Mr. Mantra said that to get by, most tea workers ate simple
meals of rice sprinkled with salt most days, splurging for eggs or fish
only on paydays.

Many workers said that speaking on the record
meant risking harassment or losing their jobs. One man who said
plantation managers had threatened him after he spoke with the
International Finance Corporation’s internal review team last April
agreed to talk anonymously, at night, when no one might see him meeting
outsiders.

“I wanted to tell my story then, but now there’s no use,” the man said.

“I’m talking to you now only because I would regret if I didn’t even show my face.”

PLETTENBERG BAY, South Africa — From the Sharpeville massacre a half-century ago to Soweto in the 1970s, South Africa’s
imagery has frequently reflected a land in turmoil. Now those same
visions — columns of smoke from burning tires, angry young men
confronting edgy police officers — have returned to haunt its leaders.

But,
long after Nelson Mandela and his supporters declared victory in the
battle against apartheid, the target of protest has shifted to what
people in hardscrabble squatter camps and townships see as the broken
promises of those who drew benefit from the revolution 20 years ago when
South Africa held its first democratic election.

In a matter of months, on May 7, a new vote will be held in which President Jacob Zuma
will face a fissured opposition in his quest for a second term to
extend what sometimes seems to be the immutable tenure of the African
National Congress, the liberation movement that won power in 1994 and
has never lost it.

The vote will be the first since Mr. Mandela’s death in December and thus a bellwether of his political heirs’ prospects.

This
is a fractious and argumentative land where people are quick to air
their grievances. Listen to the radio talk shows or scan the newspapers,
talk to people in taxi lines and townships, and there is a litany of
grievances that has unsettled the country’s elite.

If there is an
identifiable cause, it is not some overarching political vision.
Protest is often to press demands for basic services — water,
sanitation, electric power, school textbooks — that outstrip the
authorities’ ability to provide them. And this in a land where hundreds
of thousands of people are drawn to settlements on the fringes of
prosperous cities in the often vain hope of finding work, while a
minority — no longer exclusively white — controls the wellsprings of
wealth and privilege.

Even Plettenberg Bay, an opulent resort on
the Indian Ocean coastline — once nicknamed “Johannesburg by the Sea” —
has come to claim a leading place among South Africa’s fastest-growing
municipalities, a gateway to the relatively prosperous Western Cape
Province.

Here, too, there have been scattered displays of
discontent. Elsewhere in South Africa, the authorities have recorded a
staggering 3,000 protest actions in the past 90 days. The unrest has
become almost routine.

South Africa last witnessed such sustained
dissent during the anti-apartheid campaigns of the mid-1980s, said Max
du Preez, an author and columnist writing in The Cape Times.

Now,
as then, there are worries about the hair-trigger response by the
police, heightened since the shooting of 34 black mineworkers who went
on strike at Marikana in 2012. In the past few weeks, a dozen protesters
have died in dissent whose impact seems all the more unpredictable
without the grass-roots organization that marked the anti-apartheid
struggle.

But the reflexes of a land that secured its political
identity through confrontation on the streets are still intact, filling
what some analysts see as a vacuum left by ineffective leadership,
corruption and inequality.

“The protest culture is far from dead,” Mr. du Preez wrote.

Just
on Wednesday, in a different set of rivalries that seemed to underscore
the point, clashes between followers of the African National Congress
and the opposition Democratic Alliance drew in police officers firing
tear gas in central Johannesburg. The eruption happened on the eve of
President Zuma’s annual State of the Nation address to Parliament in
Cape Town on Thursday.

It was a perhaps bizarre footnote to the
country’s long struggle for universal suffrage that, last weekend, as
the deadline approached for voters to register for the May election,
scuffles erupted between those who wanted to cast a ballot and those who
saw no point.

“I have to be brave because this is my right,”
said Buyiswa Ndabeni, who ran a gantlet of hostile protesters to
register for the election in Bekkersdal near Johannesburg. But one of
her adversaries, Bongani Jonas, told a South African reporter that he
would “never make that mistake” of voting again because “these people
forget who put them in power.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

9) North American Leaders Urged to Restore Monarch Butterfly’s Habitat

MEXICO
CITY — Hoping to focus attention on the plight of the monarch butterfly
at a North American summit meeting next week, a group of prominent
scientists and writers urged the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada to commit to restoring the habitat that supports the insect’s extraordinary migration across the continent.

Calling the situation facing the butterfly “grim,” the group issued a letter that outlined a proposal to plant milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food source, along its migratory route in Canada and the United States.

Milkweed
has been disappearing from American fields over the past decade as
farmers have switched to genetically modified corn and soybeans that are
resistant to the herbicide glyphosate that kills other plants. At the
same time, subsidies to produce corn for ethanol have increased,
expanding the amount of land planted with corn by an estimated 25
percent since 2007.

“We can’t ask farmers to change their
habits,” said Homero Aridjis, the Mexican poet who wrote the letter,
which was to be released on Friday.

Instead, the proposal
encouraged planting milkweed on roadsides and between fields, and
suggested subsidies for farmers to set aside land that is free of
herbicides.

“This is a viable proposal. It is not impossible,”
said Mr. Aridjis, who signed the letter with Gary Paul Nabhan, a
conservationist and writer at the University of Arizona. “Otherwise, we
face an ecological genocide, because if we take away the monarch’s
plants we kill the monarchs.”

On Wednesday, President Obama is
scheduled to meet President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime
Minister Stephen Harper of Canada in the Mexican city of Toluca, about
an hour’s drive from the volcanic mountains where the butterflies winter
after flying thousands of miles.

This winter, the area that the
butterflies cover dropped sharply, to 1.65 acres, the smallest ever. In
1996, the butterflies covered 45 acres across the oyamel fir forests,
where they form giant fluttering colonies.

The Mexican government
has proved successful over the past five years at halting most of the
large-scale illegal logging that was long seen as the biggest threat to
the monarch. But smaller logging continues.

“As Mexico is
addressing the logging issues, so now must the United States and Canada
address the effects of our current agricultural policies,” the letter
said.

About 20 leading butterfly specialists signed the letter,
along with conservationists, writers, artists and filmmakers from
Mexico, the United States and Canada.

WASHINGTON
— The National Security Agency has told Congress that it has forced out
a civilian employee after a lengthy investigation to “assign
accountability” for the disclosure of intelligence secrets by Edward J.
Snowden, one of its former contractors.

Two others — identified
only as an active-duty military member and another contractor — were
“removed from access to N.S.A. information” and facilities last August.
But because neither worked directly for the N.S.A., the agency told the
House Judiciary Committee in a letter, any further action would have to
be determined by their employers.

The letter, first reported by NBC News,
was intended to answer congressional queries about who, beyond Mr.
Snowden himself, would be held accountable for the security lapses that
led to his disclosures. The answer appeared to suggest that no senior
officials of the N.S.A. or its oversight organization, the office of the
director of national intelligence, will be disciplined or fired for
what officials have called the largest and most damaging disclosure of
classified material in American history.

The director of the
N.S.A., Gen. Keith B. Alexander, is retiring next month after serving
far longer than his predecessors. The director of national intelligence,
James R. Clapper Jr., who has also been a focus of criticism for
failing to police the speed at which security upgrades have been
conducted throughout the intelligence community, remains in office.

Both
men, and their wives, were guests at the state dinner on Tuesday night
for France’s president, François Hollande, which was widely interpreted
as an indication they remained in good stead at the White House.

The
N.S.A. letter was written by the director of the agency’s legislative
affairs office, Ethan L. Bauman, and provided the first public account
of how Mr. Snowden obtained access to materials for which his own
passwords would not give him access.

It said that an “N.S.A.
civilian” — reported to be Mr. Snowden’s supervisor, though the letter
did not say that — gave the 29-year-old contractor his Public Key
Infrastructure certificate to gain access to documents on N.S.A. Net,
the intelligence agency’s intranet.

Vanee M. Vines, an agency
spokeswoman, declined to identify the employee who resigned or to say if
he or she had supervised Mr. Snowden. The employee presumably was a
colleague at the N.S.A. facility in Hawaii where Mr. Snowden worked. It
is not clear if the contractor and the member of the military mentioned
in the letter also worked there.

A Public Key Infrastructure
certificate is a first step in enabling access to a restricted computer
system. But gaining access also requires passwords, and the letter from
the N.S.A. alleged that Mr. Snowden used a bit of digital deception to
obtain the password; the civilian N.S.A. employee entered his password
on Mr. Snowden’s computer, not realizing that “Mr. Snowden was able to
capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified
information.”

In past interviews, Mr. Snowden has denied that he
stole the passwords of colleagues to gain access to any material in the
N.S.A.’s systems.

The New York Times reported Sunday, and Mr.
Clapper later confirmed to Congress, that Mr. Snowden released a web
crawler inside the N.S.A.’s computer systems once he had gained access.
That crawler, which automatically indexes the N.S.A. Net and could copy
any documents in its path, would essentially use the passwords that Mr.
Snowden held, legitimately or illegitimately.

Mr. Snowden later
copied files delivered by the crawler to some kind of external storage
device, like a thumb drive or hard disk drive, before leaving his N.S.A.
job last April and heading to Hong Kong. He is now living in Moscow.
The letter to the committee suggested that the N.S.A. has understood how
Mr. Snowden obtained passwords since June 18, when “the N.S.A. civilian
admitted to F.B.I. special agents that he allowed Mr. Snowden” to use
his credentials.

The N.S.A. said that it “initially suspended the
civilian’s access to N.S.A. sensitive compartmented information” and
revoked his security clearances in November. The civilian resigned on
Jan. 10.

How Mr. Snowden gained access to documents for which his
passwords would not give him clearance is a secondary issue to two
questions currently reverberating around the intelligence agencies and
the Justice Department: Exactly how much material did he take with him
when he left Hawaii, and did he have the help of a foreign intelligence
service?

On the first question, intelligence officials have
estimated that he “accessed” 1.7 million documents, or more. But it is
unclear how many of those he actually downloaded onto some kind of
removable media and took with him or placed in the Internet cloud.

Mr.
Snowden’s advocates have said that the amount he took has been
exaggerated by General Alexander, Mr. Clapper and other officials, as
part of an effort to paint him as a traitor, rather than a
whistle-blower.

Glenn Greenwald, the advocacy journalist who
received much of the Snowden trove, sent out a Twitter message on
Thursday about the N.S.A. report to Congress, commenting sarcastically
that “there’s no reason to be the slightest bit skeptical about a memo
prepared by the NSA about Snowden & intended for public release #USMedia.”

The
report’s finding that an N.S.A. civilian employee bore at least some
responsibility will complicate the argument that the origin of the leak
was an over-reliance on contractors by the agency.

Senator
Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who heads the Senate
Intelligence Committee, suggested last summer that there should be
legislation severely restricting the access that contractors have to the
intelligence agency systems; that effort failed after intelligence
officials explained how deeply they depend on outsiders to design and
operate those systems.

Booz Allen Hamilton, where Mr. Snowden worked in his final job in Hawaii, has designed key elements of the N.S.A. networks.

Since
the 2008 crisis, regulators around the world have tried to rein in
bonuses, worried that big payouts encourage excessive risk-taking by
bankers and traders. The European Union has gone further than most, limiting bankers to bonuses equal to one or two times their salaries.

But the bank giants operating in London — including Goldman Sachs, Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch and Barclays
— are seeking to outflank the new restrictions. Responding to the law,
they are structuring new pay packages that try to satisfy both their
emboldened regulators and their very expensive employees.

So goodbye, big bonus.

Hello, role-based pay.

Other banks have called their new payments “allowances.” At least one labeled it “reviewable salary.”

One of the European lawmakers who led the push for bonus caps is not buying the semantic somersaults.

“These are bonuses in disguise,” said Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian member of the Green Party in the European Parliament. “I wonder how they will hold up in a court of law.”

The banks are nonetheless pressing on with the changes, with the goal of making sure their top talent in Europe gets paid.

Yet
as the banks tie themselves in knots to comply with the bonus cap law,
the new pay packages may undermine what bank regulators worldwide have
sought to do for nearly six years: force banks to stagger the payment of
bonuses over much longer periods. Such deferrals, as they are known on
Wall Street, enable the money to be taken back if bets go bad.

“This
may leave us not just no better off, but worse off from the management
of systemic risk,” said Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Select
Committee and a Conservative member of Parliament. The commission on
banking standards that he led concluded, among other issues, that
compensation needed to include longer deferrals and more take-backs to
discourage excessive risk-taking.

But the new structures — which do not entirely replace bonuses — pay more upfront and leave less available to take back.

“It
doesn’t chime well with what regulators are asking banks to do,” said
Jon Terry, head of the global financial services human resources leader
at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, which is working with many of the
leading banks.

Bank executives and many leading political
figures in Britain say that the bonus-cap law, which applies to European
banks and the European operations of global banks, will drive up their
fixed costs of compensation by forcing them to pay more in annual
salary.

It also creates an unfair playing field, they say,
noting that bankers and traders in New York, Hong Kong or Singapore face
no such constraints.

“It makes London less competitive against
the U.S. and Singapore and anywhere outside the E.U.,” said Stephen
Brooks of the PA Consulting Group in London. “That’s a disadvantage to
the E.U.”

For the moment, the banks in London have an ally in the British government, which is suing to block the law, saying that the European Commission
has overstepped its authority. (Banker compensation is important to the
British government, which gets 60 cents of every bonus dollar in the
form of taxes and national insurance, according to Mr. Brooks.)

And
British regulators so far seem comfortable with the new pay structures,
with banks including Barclays and Goldman Sachs indicating in memos to
employees and internal conversations that they have conferred with their
regulator on the pay packages.

The 2013 European law limits
certain bankers to bonuses equal to one times their salary, or two times
if shareholders approve it. It defines what is considered fixed pay and
what is variable pay, more commonly known as bonuses.

The banks
were clearly in a bind. Data from the European Banking Authority show
that in 2012 top bankers earned bonuses of two and a half to five and a
half times as much as their salaries. In 2012, for example, Goldman
Sachs paid its 115 so-called code staff employees in Europe — those to
whom the caps apply — $86.1 million in salary and $450.7 million in cash
and stock bonuses. That averages to about $4.7 million in total
compensation for each person, with the bonus equal to 5.2 times as much
as the salary.

But bank executives and their lawyers and
consultants spotted an opening in the rigid definitions, with payments
that are neither fixed, like a salary, nor variable, like a bonus.

For
example, such payments may be made weekly, monthly or semiannually —
like a salary — but they cannot be applied to pensions, making them more
like a bonus. For some, the amounts will be reset every year, like a
salary, and for others, it can vary with the economic environment, or a
banker’s new role, like a bonus.

The British regulator has told
the banks that the payments will most likely pass muster if they are
noncontractual and not based on performance, according to compensation
consultants, bank officials and lawyers. This is a bit of a turnaround
for an industry that believes its extraordinarily high compensation is
justified on the basis of exceptional performance.

A spokeswoman for the Prudential Regulatory Authority, which is an arm of the Bank of England and regulates the banks, declined to comment.

Antony
P. Jenkins, Barclays’ chief executive, said this week that role-based
pay was “not performance-related, but an adjustment to fixed pay.” After
announcing a drop in profits and job cuts, Mr. Jenkins defended the
decision to increase the investment bank’s bonus pool by 13 percent.

“Barclays
does not set competitive rates in the marketplace,” he said, insisting
that it was in the interest of shareholders to attract and retain top
talent (though he waived his own bonus of £2.7 million, or $4.5
million). The move prompted some corporate governance experts to
question, “for whom is this institution being run?” as Roger Barker,
head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors, put it.

Payments
to employees that are of similar size to bonuses are expected to raise
many questions. Traditionally, traders have been paid largely on the
basis of their business unit’s profits. Healthy employee incentives
could be undermined if large sums were being paid out on the basis of
broader measures like the wider economic environment or a person’s job
description. Shareholders, in particular, might protest. The unorthodox
payments come at the same time that British regulators have been trying
to press banks to repair their ethical culture.

At a hearing
last year, Andrew Bailey, the chief of the Prudential Regulation
Authority, described one unintended effect of the bonus cap. “It will
also institute an unhelpful culture of banks spending their time finding
ways around the rules,” he said.

His prediction did not take
long to come true. Barclays, for example, explained its new role-based
pay in a memo to employees in November. The pay, the memo said, would
allow the bank to comply with the European legislation and offer
“competitive market compensation to employees.” In January, Bank of
America Merrill Lynch told its client-facing managing directors in
London that they would get a 20 percent pay raise to $500,000
(£303,000).

While the law came from the European Parliament, the
recently created European Banking Authority is charged with defining to
whom the law applies. It is now writing guidelines to further clarify
what constitutes “fixed and variable” compensation.

Both the
authority and the European Commission can investigate noncompliance, and
the commission can bring a case to the European Court of Justice. This
raises the risk of regulatory penalties to banks trying to make bonuses
look like other types of pay.

“We expect all banks to comply
strictly with European rules on bonuses, and continuous talk about how
to circumvent the rules is disturbing,” said Michel Barnier, Europe’s
commissioner for overseeing financial services.

NEW
DELHI — India, the second-largest exporter of over-the-counter and
prescription drugs to the United States, is coming under increased
scrutiny by American regulators for safety lapses, falsified drug test results and selling fake medicines.

Dr.
Margaret A. Hamburg, the commissioner of the United States Food and
Drug Administration, arrived in India this week to express her growing
unease with the safety of Indian medicines because of “recent lapses in quality at a handful of pharmaceutical firms.”

India’s
pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent of over-the-counter and
generic prescription drugs consumed in the United States, so the
increased scrutiny could have profound implications for American
consumers.

F.D.A. investigators are blitzing Indian
drug plants, financing the inspections with some of the roughly $300
million in annual fees from generic drug makers collected as part of a
2012 law requiring increased scrutiny of overseas plants. The agency
inspected 160 Indian drug plants last year, three times as many as in
2009. The increased scrutiny has led to a flood of new penalties,
including half of the warning letters the agency issued last year to
drug makers.

Dr. Hamburg was met by Indian officials
and executives who, shocked by recent F.D.A. export bans of generic
versions of popular medicines — such as the acne drug Accutane, the pain
drug Neurontin and the antibiotic Cipro — that the F.D.A. determined
were adulterated suspect she is just protecting a domestic industry from
cheaper imports.

“There are some people who take a
very sinister view of the F.D.A. inspections,” Keshav Desiraju, India’s
health secretary until this week, said in a recent interview.

The
F.D.A.'s increased enforcement has already cost Indian companies dearly
— Ranbaxy, one of India’s biggest drug manufacturers, pleaded guilty to
felony charges and paid a $500 million fine last year, the largest ever
levied against a generic company. And many worry that worse is in
store.

“If I have to follow U.S. standards in
inspecting facilities supplying to the Indian market,” G. N. Singh,
India’s top drug regulator, said in a recent interview with an Indian newspaper, “we will have to shut almost all of those.”

The unease culminated Tuesday
when a top executive at Ranbaxy — which has repeatedly been caught
lying to the F.D.A. and found to have conditions such as flies “too
numerous to count” in critical plant areas — pleaded with Dr. Hamburg at
a private meeting with other drug executives to allow his products into
the United States so that the company could more easily pay for fixes.
She politely declined.

India’s drug industry is one of
the country’s most important economic engines, exporting $15 billion in
products annually, and some of its factories are world-class, virtually
undistinguishable from their counterparts in the West. But others suffer
from serious quality control problems. The World Health Organization estimated that one in five drugs made in India are fakes. A 2010 survey of Delhi pharmacies found that 12 percent of sampled drugs were spurious.

In one recent example, counterfeit medicines at a pediatric hospital in Kashmir are now suspected of playing a role in hundreds of infant deaths there in recent years.

One
widely used antibiotic was found to contain no active ingredient after
being randomly tested in a government lab. The test was kept secret for nearly a year while some 100,000 useless pills continued to be dispensed.

More
tests of hospital medicines found dozens more that were substandard,
including a crucial intravenous antibiotic used in sick infants.

“Some
of the fake tablets were used by pregnant women in the post-surgical
prevention of infections,” said Dr. M. Ishaq Geer, senior assistant
professor of pharmacology at Kashmir University. “That’s very serious.”

Investigations
of the deaths are continuing, but convictions of drug counterfeiters in
India are extremely rare.Satish Reddy, president of the Indian
Pharmaceutical Alliance, said Indian drug manufacturers are better than
the F.D.A. now contends. “More rigorous enforcement is needed, for sure,
but this impression that India is overrun with counterfeits is
unjustified,” Mr. Reddy said.

But Heather Bresch, chief
executive of Mylan, which has plants in the United States and India,
said regulatory scrutiny outside of the United States was long overdue.
“If there were no cops around, would everyone drive the speed limit?”
Ms. Bresch asked. “You get careless, start taking risks. Our government
has enabled this.”

For Dr. Hamburg, the trip is part of
a long-running effort to create a global network of drug and food
regulators to help scrutinize the growing flood of products coming into
the United States, including 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the
United States, 50 percent of the fresh fruit, 20 percent of the
vegetables and the vast majority of drugs.

She has gone
to conclaves of regulators from Europe and elsewhere to coordinate
policing, but Indian officials have so far not attended such meetings.

Many
of India’s drug manufacturing facilities are of top quality. Cipla, one
of the industry’s giants, has 40 plants across the country that
together can produce more than 21 billion tablets and capsules annually,
and one of its plants in Goa appeared just as sterile, automated and
high tech on a recent tour as those in the United States.

Cipla
follows F.D.A. guidelines at every plant and on every manufacturing
line, and the company exports more than 55 percent of its production,
said Yusuf Hamied, the company chairman.

But Benjamin
Mwesige, a pharmacist at the Uganda Cancer Institute in Kampala, said in
an interview in July that the institute had stopped buying cancer drugs
from India in 2011 because it had received shipments of drugs that
turned out to be counterfeit and inactive, with Cipla labels that Mr.
Mwesige believed were forged.

He became suspicious when
doctors began seeing chemotherapy patients whose cancer showed none of
the expected responses to the drugs — and who also had none of the usual
side effects. The drugs that had been prescribed were among the
mainstays of cancer treatment — methotrexate, docetaxel and vincristine.
Laboratory tests confirmed that the drugs were bogus, and Mr. Mwesige
estimated that in 2011 about 20 percent of the drugs that the institute
bought were counterfeit.

Enforcement of regulations
over all is very weak, analysts say, and India’s government does a poor
job policing many of its industries. Last month, the United States
Federal Aviation Administration downgraded India’s aviation safety ranking because the country’s air safety regulator is understaffed, and a global safety group found that many of India’s best-selling small cars are unsafe.

India’s
Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, the country’s drug
regulator, has a staff of 323, about 2 percent the size of the F.D.A.'s,
and its authority is limited to new drugs. The making of medicines that
have been on the market at least four years is overseen by state health
departments, many of which are corrupt or lack the expertise to oversee
a sophisticated industry. Despite the flood of counterfeit drugs, Mr.
Singh, India’s top drug regulator, warned in meetings with the F.D.A. of the risk of overregulation.

This
absence of oversight, however, is a central reason India’s
pharmaceutical industry has been so profitable. Drug manufacturers
estimate that routine F.D.A. inspections add about 25 percent to overall
costs. In the wake of the 2012 law that requires the F.D.A. for the
first time to equalize oversight of domestic and foreign plants, India’s
cost advantage could shrink significantly.

Some top manufacturers are already warning that they may leave, tough medicine for an already slowing economy.

“I’m
a great nationalist, an Indian first and last,” Dr. Hamied said. “But
companies like Cipla are looking to expand their businesses abroad and
not in India.”

American businesses and F.D.A. officials
are just as concerned about the quality of drugs coming out of China,
but the F.D.A.'s efforts to increase inspections there have so far been
frustrated by the Chinese government.

“China is the
source of some of the largest counterfeit manufacturing operations that
we find globally,” said John P. Clark, Pfizer’s chief security officer,
who added that Chinese authorities were cooperative.

Using
its new revenues, the F.D.A. tried to bolster its staff in China in
February 2012. But the Chinese government has so far failed to provide
the necessary visas despite an announced agreement in December 2013
during a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said Erica
Jefferson, an F.D.A. spokeswoman.

The United States has
become so dependent on Chinese imports, however, that the F.D.A. may
not be able to do much about the Chinese refusal. The crucial
ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other
lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China.

CHATTANOOGA,
Tenn. — In a defeat for organized labor in the South, employees at the
Volkswagen plant here voted 712 to 626 against joining the United
Automobile Workers.

The loss is an especially stinging
blow for U.A.W. because Volkswagen did not even oppose the unionization
drive. The union’s defeat — in what was one of the most closely watched
unionization votes in decades — is expected to slow, perhaps stymie, the
union’s long-term plans to organize other auto plants in the South.

A
retired local judge, Samuel H. Payne, announced the vote results inside
VW’s sprawling plant after officials from the National Labor Relations
Board had counted the ballots. In the hours before the votes were
tallied, after three days of voting at the assembly plant, both sides
were predicting victory.

The vote this week came in a
region that is traditionally anti-union, and as a result many said the
U.A.W. faced an uphill battle. The union saw the campaign as a vital
first step toward expanding in the South, while Republicans and many
companies in Tennessee feared that a U.A.W. triumph would hurt the
state’s welcoming image for business.

Standing outside
the Volkswagen plant, Mike Jarvis, a three-year employee who works on
the finishing line, said the majority had voted against U.A.W. because
they were persuaded the union had hurt Detroit’s automakers.

“Look
at what happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit and how they
struggled. They all shared one huge factor: the U.A.W.,” said Mr.
Jarvis, who added that he had had bad experiences with other labor
unions. “If you look at how the U.A.W’s membership has plunged, that
shows they’re doing a lot wrong.”

The U.A.W. lost the
unionization campaign even though it took place with one highly unusual —
and highly favorable — circumstance. Unlike most American companies,
Volkswagen pledged to remain neutral, in some ways offering quiet
support to the union.

Nevertheless, Republican
politicians in Tennessee as well as some outside conservative groups
made sure that the plant’s nearly 1,600 workers heard plenty of
anti-union arguments.

Governor Bill Haslam, a
Republican, warned that auto part suppliers would not locate in the
Chattanooga area if the plant was unionized, while Senator Bob Corker
said Volkswagen executives had told him that the plant would add a new
production line, making SUVs, if the workers rejected the U.A.W. In a
series of interviews this week, Mr. Corker, a Republican and a former
mayor of Chattanooga, asserted that a union victory would make
Volkswagen less competitive and hurt workers’ living standards.

To
step up the pressure, State Senator Bo Watson, who represents a suburb
of Chattanooga, warned that the Republican-controlled legislature was
unlikely to approve further subsidies to Volkswagen if the workers
embraced the U.A.W., a threat that might discourage the company from
expanding.

Volkswagen officials had urged “third
parties” to remain neutral and stay out of the unionization battle.
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader, helped underwrite a new group,
the Center for Worker Freedom, that put up 13 billboards in Chattanooga,
warning that the city might become the next Detroit if the workers
voted for the union.

Frank Fischer, chief executive and
chairman of Volkswagen Chattanooga, rushed to respond after Mr. Corker
said VW officials had told him they would expand the plant if the U.A.W.
was defeated. Some legal experts said that if Volkswagen officials made
such a statement, it might be construed as an illegal intimidation or
inducement to pressure the workers to vote against the union.

In
a statement, Mr. Fischer said, “There is no connection between our
Chattanooga employees’ decision about whether to be represented by a
union and the decision about where to build a new product for the U.S.
market.”“We’re obviously deeply disappointed,” said Bob King, the
U.A.W.'s president at a news conference. “We’re also outraged by the
outside interference,” he added, noting that a United States senator,
Tennessee’s governor and various leaders of the state legislature
attacked his union’s efforts.

Mr. King said he thought
the pressures from Tennessee’s politicians were what swung the election.
Last fall, the union said a majority of the plant’s workers had signed
cards saying they favored joining the U.A.W.

“We’ll
look at our legal options over the next few days,” he said, presumably
meaning the union might consider filing a complaint with the N.L.R.B.
about improper actions to influence how workers voted.

Volkswagen
did not oppose the U.A.W. partly because its officials were eager to
create a German-style works council, a committee of managers and
blue-collar and white-collar workers who develop factory policies, on
issues like work schedules and vacations. Volkswagen, which has unions
and works councils at virtually all of its 105 other plants worldwide,
views such councils as crucial for improving morale and cooperation and
increasing productivity.

Mr. Watson, the state senator,
attacked Volkswagen for taking a neutral-to-positive stance toward the
U.A.W. saying its approach was “unfair, unbalanced, and, quite frankly,
un-America in the traditions of American labor campaigns.”

Many
legal experts say it would be illegal to have a works council unless
workers first voted to have a union. If the Chattanooga gets a work
council, it will be the first factory in the United States to have such a
council.

After the results were announced, Mr. Fischer
said the vote was not against having a works council. He said
Volkswagen would now seek to determine the best method to develop such a
council for the plant.

Mr. Fischer said Volkswagen looked forward to working with state and local officials for future growth for the plant.

Republicans
said the U.A.W. badly needed a success at Volkswagen to gain members
and dues money after its membership had fallen to less than one-third of
its peak. Mr. King has long said one of his main goals was to unionize
some transplants, or foreign-owned auto companies with plants in the
United States, partly to prevent the transplants from pulling down wages
and benefits at Detroit’s automakers.

Sean McAlinden,
chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research, said, “Bob King
has been very open that if they don’t organize the transplants, their
future as a large automotive union is in jeopardy.” He said the
transplants account for 30 percent of auto sales in the United States,
while Detroit’s automakers account for 45 percent and imports the
remaining 25 percent.

Andy Berke, the mayor of
Chattanooga and a Democrat, voiced dismay with the threats of cutting
off subsidies to VW and the warnings that a union victory would
undermine the area’s business climate.

“Whatever is
going on politically, the most important issue is jobs, and we shouldn’t
let the politics of the situation interfere with bringing good
middle-class opportunities to Chattanooga,” Mr. Berke said.

Mike
Burton, a VW worker who led the anti-union drive, said many workers
felt that they were paid well and treated well without having a union
and thus saw no need to have one. He said many workers objected to the
U.A.W. having initially sought unionization based on what it said was
having a majority of cards signed favoring a union.

“We
don’t need the U.A.W. to give us rights we already have,” he said. “We
can already talk to the company if we have any problems.”

A group of death row inmates won a court judgment Friday that
temporarily blocks executions in Arkansas and says the state Legislature
gave too much authority to the Correction Department when it designated
the agency director as the person who picks the drug for lethal
injections. A law passed last year specified that the state use a
barbiturate to put inmates to death but did not specify which one. Judge
Wendell Griffen of Pulaski County granted the request by nine death row
inmates, ensuring that the state cannot conduct an execution as the
matter continues to wind through the courts. Arkansas, which has no
scheduled executions and has not executed an inmate since 2005, is among
a number of states that are weighing changes to execution methods amid
other lawsuits. The inmates raised two issues and won on one, the agency
director’s authority to pick the drug. But Judge Griffen threw out the
other issue, in which the inmates argued that they could not be executed
under the 2013 law because it was not in force at the time of their
crimes.

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B.
EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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The South Korean Rail Strike and the Suppression of Unions

Forum and Discussion

Sunday, February 16th, 2pm

Location: Connie Barbour Room

2nd floor of the RE Building

1606 Bonita Ave

Berkeley, CA 94709.

It is not wheelchair accessible.

On
December 22, 2013, the right-wing government of Park Geun-hye illegally
attacked the offices of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU)
with 5,000 police and military troops. The government was attempting to
arrest the leaders of the Korean Rail Workers Union (KRWU), which waged
the longest rail strike in South Korean history to stop the
privatization of the railways.

The South Korean Consulate in San
Francisco organized conservative Koreans to disrupt a solidarity
demonstration for the KRWU on January 17th , 2014.

Another rally is planned for February 25th in front of the Consulate at 4pm. Co-sponsors: Transport Workers Solidarity Committee www.transportworkers.orgBerkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalist

Across the state, renters face unfair evictions by real estate
speculators, rising rents, and slumlords that won’t make repairs. Now
more than ever, renters need relief. On February 18, 2014, renters and
allies will unite in Sacramento for a march on the Capitol to demand a
fair shake for California renters.

Friday – Saturday Feb. 21-22: San Francisco, CA

We invite you to join us in launching “Grounds for Dissent, a Pop-Up GI Coffeehouse.”
This Coffeehouse will be ours to build and enjoy for just the one
weekend, but hopefully it will also be fertile grounds for us to grow
deeper roots to invigorate and celebrate not just the Coffeehouse
Movement but our common concerns, larger connections and commitments.

Tentative ScheduleFriday February 21st:6 pm: West Coast GI Coffeehouse tour presents, Join
Coffee Strong, Under the Hood, and Clearing Barrel to hear about their
work supporting soldiers, military communities, and GI resistance in
Washington, Texas, and Germany7-10 pm: Anti-militarist dance party–Food, drinks, meet and mingle with members of the GI coffeehouse tour

Saturday, February 22nd:Morning: Youth-led theater of the oppressed workshop.
Join BAY PEACE (Better Alternatives for Youth) as they help us imagine a
world without militarism. Afternoon: Warrior Writers Workshop with
Aaron Hughes5:00 pm: Panel Discussion “Enrooting Spaces of Resistance”7-10 pm: Performances and Open Mic

http://gicoffeehousetour.org/

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C.
SPECIAL APPEALS AND

ONGOING
CAMPAIGNS

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End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global

Militarization

United National Antiwar Coalition Call for Spring Days of

Action 2014

Today
we issue an international call for Spring Days of Action—2014, a
coordinated campaign in April and May to end drone killings, drone
surveillance and global militarization.

The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.

The campaign will provide information on:

1.
The suffering of tens-of-thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the
killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone
surveillance on community life.

2. How attack and surveillance
drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance,
clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United
States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral
exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the
waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental
destruction and global warming.

In addition to cases in the
Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama’s
“pivot” into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold
and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60 percent of its
military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned
Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will show, among other things, how this
surge of “pivot” forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the
U.S. military-industrial complex, will hit every American community
with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which
people rely for survival. In short, we will connect drones and
militarization with “austerity” in America.

3. How drone attacks
have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection
of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and
have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around
the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone
surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and
police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and
low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly
unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of
politics and the prospect of endless war.

We will discuss how
the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to
monitor U.S. citizens and particularly how the Administration is
accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the
United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it
applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.

The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage
of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance
from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to
bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.

The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers:

Sireen
Khudairy was arrested again at 4am on Tuesday 7th January 2014. According to
reports she has been taken to Huwwara military point. When the Israeli army
took her from her home they didn't show any papers to her or the person she was
with.

This
follows eight months of harassment of this 24-year-old Palestinian woman who is
a teacher, activist and supporter of the non-violent action against the Israeli
occupation. She was previously imprisoned from May to July 2013, and has been
subjected to frequent harassment ever since. See further details at:

http://freesireen.wordpress.com

Please
help by contacting your Embassies urgently to demand her release and spread her
appeal widely. Follow updates on:

https://www.facebook.com/FreeSireenKhudiri?ref=hl

Please
contact us to let us know any action you take. We will pass this information on
to her family. Thanks for your solidarity and support.

Steven Katsineris, January 2014

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

U.S.
Court of Appeals Rules Against Lorenzo Johnson’s
New Legal Challenge to His Frame-up Conviction!
Demand the PA Attorney General Dismiss the Charges!
Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied Lorenzo Johnson’s motion to
file a Second Habeas Corpus Petition. The order contained the outrageous
declaration that Johnson hadn’t made a “prima facie case” that he had new
evidence of his innocence. This not only puts a legal obstacle in Johnson’s
path as his fight for freedom makes its way (again) through the state and
federal courts—but it undermines the newly filed Pennsylvania state appeal that
is pending in the Court of Common Pleas.

Stripped
of “legalese,” the court’s October 15, 2013 order says Johnson’s new
evidence was not brought into court soon enough—although it was the prosecution
and police who withheld evidence and coerced witnesses into lying or not coming
forward with the truth! This, despite over fifteen years and rounds of legal
battles to uncover the evidence of government misconduct. This is a set-back
for Lorenzo Johnson’s renewed fight for his freedom, but Johnson is even more
determined as his PA state court appeal continues.

Increased
public support and protest is needed. The fight for Lorenzo Johnson’s freedom
is not only a fight for this courageous man and family. The fight for Lorenzo
Johnson is also a fight for all the innocent others who have been framed and
are sitting in the slow death of prison. The PA Attorney General is directly
pursuing the charges against Lorenzo, despite the evidence of his innocence and
the corruption of the police. Free Lorenzo Johnson, Now!

—Rachel
Wolkenstein, Esq.

October 25, 2013

For
more on the federal court and PA state court legal filings.

Hear
Mumia’s latest commentary, “Cat Cries”

Go
to: www.FreeLorenzoJohnson.org for more information, to sign the petition, and
how to help.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

PUSH
CHELSEA'S JAILERS TO RESPECT HER IDENTITY

Call
and write Ft Leavenworth today and tell them to honor Manning's wishes around
her name and gender:

Call:
(913) 758-3600

Write
to:

Col.
Sioban Ledwith, Commander

U.S.
Detention Barracks

1301
N Warehouse Rd

Ft.
Leavenworth KS 66027

Private
Manning has been an icon both for the government transparency movement and
LGBTQ activists because of her fearlessness and acts of conscience. Now, as she
begins serving her sentence, Chelsea has asked for help with legal appeals,
family visits, education, and support for undergoing gender transition. The
latter is a decision she’s made following years of experiencing gender
dysphoria and examining her options. At a difficult time in her life, she
joined the military out of hope–the hope that she could use her service to save
lives, and also the hope that it would help to suppress her feelings of gender
dysphoria. But after serving time in Iraq, Private Manning realized what
mattered to her most was the truth, personal as well as political, even when it
proved challenging.

Now
she wants the Fort Leavenworth military prison to allow her access to hormone
replacement therapy which she has offered to pay for herself, as she pursues
the process to have her name legally changed to ‘Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.’

To
encourage the prison to honor her transgender identity, we’re calling on
progressive supporters and allies to contact Fort Leavenworth officials
demanding they acknowledge her requested name change immediately. Currently,
prison officials are not required to respect Chelsea’s identity, and can even
refuse to deliver mail addressed to the name ‘Chelsea Manning.’ However, it’s
within prison administrators’ power to begin using the name ‘Chelsea Manning’
now, in advance of the legal name change which will most likely be approved
sometime next year. It’s also up to these officials to approve Private
Manning’s request for hormone therapy.

Call:
(913) 758-3600

Write
to:

Col.
Sioban Ledwith, Commander

U.S.
Detention Barracks

1301
N Warehouse Rd

Ft.
Leavenworth KS 66027

Tell
them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity
by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in
mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical
treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).”

While
openly transgender individuals are allowed to serve in many other militaries
around the world, the US military continues to deny their existence. Now, by
speaking up for Chelsea’s right to treatment, you can support one brave
whistleblower in her personal struggle, and help set an important benchmark for
the rights of transgender individuals everywhere. (Remember that letters
written with focus and a respectful tone are more likely to be effective.) Feel
free to copy this sample letter.

Earlier
this year, the Private Manning Support Network won the title of most
“absolutely fabulous overall contingent” at the San Francisco Pride Parade, the
largest celebration of its kind for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender
and Questioning) people nationwide. Over one thousand people marched for
Private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in that parade, to show LGBTQ
community pride for the Iraq War’s most well-known whistleblower.

Help
us continue to cover 100%
of Pvt. Manning's legal fees! Donate today.

We
are working to ensure that the ACCJC’s authority is not renewed by the
Department of Education this December when they are up for their 5-year
renewal. Our campaign made it possible for over 50 Third Party Comments to be
sent to the DOE re: the ACCJC. Our next step in this campaign is to send a
delegation from CCSF to Washington, D.C. to give oral comments at the hearing
on December 12th. We expect to have an array of forces aligned on the other
side who have much more money and resources than we do.

So
please support this effort to get ACCJC authority revoked!

LEGAL
CAMPAIGN

Save
CCSF members have been meeting with Attorney Dan Siegel since last May to
explore legal avenues to fight the ACCJC. After much consideration, and
consultation with AFT 2121’s attorney as well as the SF City Attorney’s office,
Dan has come up with a legal strategy that is complimentary to what is already
being pursued. In fact, AFT 2121’s attorney is encouraging us to go forward.

The
total costs of pursuing this (depositions, etc.) will be substantially more
than $15,000. However, Dan is willing to do it for a fixed fee of $15,000. He
will not expect a retainer, i.e. payment in advance, but we should start
payments ASAP. If we win the ACCJC will have to pay our costs.

PLEASE
HELP BOTH OF THESE IMPORTANT EFFORTS!

Checks
can be made out to Save CCSF Coalition with “legal” in the memo line and sent
to:

16
Years in Solitary Confinement Is Like a "Living Tomb"

American
Civil Liberties Union petition to end long-term solitary confinement:

California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard: We stand with the prisoners on hunger
strike. We urge you to comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in
America’s Prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary
confinement.

In
California, hundreds of prisoners have been held in solitary for more than a
decade – some for infractions as trivial as reading Machiavelli's "The
Prince."

Gabriel
Reyes describes the pain of being isolated for at least 22 hours a day for the
last 16 years:

“Unless
you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,
between four cold walls, with little concept of time…. It is a living tomb …’ I
have not been allowed physical contact with any of my loved ones since 1995…I
feel helpless and hopeless. In short, I am being psychologically tortured.”

That’s
why over 30,000 prisoners in California began a hunger strike – the biggest the
state has ever seen. They’re refusing food to protest prisoners being held for
decades in solitary and to push for other changes to improve their basic
conditions.

California
Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard has tried to dismiss the strikers and
refuses to negotiate, but the media pressure is building through the strike. If
tens of thousands of us take action, we can help keep this issue in the
spotlight so that Secretary Beard can’t ignore the inhumane treatment of
prisoners.

Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.

Solitary
is such an extreme form of punishment that a United Nations torture rapporteur
called for an international ban on the practice except in rare occasions.
Here’s why:

The
majority of the 80,000 people held in solitary in this country are severely
mentally ill or because of a minor infraction (it’s a myth that it’s only for
violent prisoners)

Even
for people with stable mental health, solitary causes severe psychological
reactions, often leading people to attempt suicide

It
jeopardizes public safety because prisoners held in solitary have a harder time
reintegrating into society.

And
to add insult to injury, the hunger strikers are now facing retaliation – their
lawyers are being restricted from visiting and the strikers are being punished.
But the media continues to write about the hunger strike and we can help keep
the pressure on Secretary Beard by signing this petition.

Sign
the petition urging Corrections Secretary Beard to end the use of long-term
solitary confinement.

Our
criminal justice system should keep communities safe and treat people fairly.
The use of solitary confinement undermines both of these goals – but little by
little, we can help put a stop to such cruelty.

Thank
you,

Anthony
for the ACLU Action team

P.S.
The hunger strikers have developed five core demands to address their basic
conditions, the main one being an end to long-term solitary confinement. They
are:

The
statement was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his
formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications
for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications.
This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O'Brien at Thursday's
pretrial hearing and first appeared on Salon.com.

You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: NLG Guide to Law Enforcement Encounters

Posted
1 day ago on July 27, 2012, 10:28 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Occupy
Wall Street is a nonviolent movement for social and economic justice, but in
recent days disturbing reports have emerged of Occupy-affiliated activists
being targeted by US law enforcement, including agents from the FBI and
Department of Homeland Security. To help ensure Occupiers and allied activists
know their rights when encountering law enforcement, we are publishing in full
the National Lawyers Guild's booklet: You Have the Right to Remain Silent. The
NLG provides invaluable support to the Occupy movement and other activists –
please click here to support the NLG.

We
strongly encourage all Occupiers to read and share the information provided
below. We also recommend you enter the NLG's national hotline number
(888-654-3265) into your cellphone (if you have one) and keep a copy handy.
This information is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact the
NLG or a criminal defense attorney immediately if you have been visited by the
FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should also alert your relatives,
friends, co-workers and others so that they will be prepared if they are
contacted as well.

You
Have the Right to Remain Silent: A Know Your Rights Guide for Law Enforcement
Encounters

What
Rights Do I Have?

Whether
or not you're a citizen, you have rights under the United States Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment gives every person the right to remain silent: not to
answer questions asked by a police officer or government agent. The Fourth
Amendment restricts the government's power to enter and search your home or
workplace, although there are many exceptions and new laws have expanded the
government's power to conduct surveillance. The First Amendment protects your
right to speak freely and to advocate for social change. However, if you are a
non-citizen, the Department of Homeland Security may target you based on your
political activities.

Standing
Up For Free Speech

The
government's crusade against politically-active individuals is intended to
disrupt and suppress the exercise of time-honored free speech activities, such
as boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing and solidarity work. Remember that
you have the right to stand up to the intimidation tactics of FBI agents and
other law enforcement officials who, with political motives, are targeting
organizing and free speech activities. Informed resistance to these tactics and
steadfast defense of your and others' rights can bring positive results. Each
person who takes a courageous stand makes future resistance to government oppression
easier for all. The National Lawyers Guild has a long tradition of standing up
to government repression. The organization itself was labeled a
"subversive" group during the McCarthy Era and was subject to FBI
surveillance and infiltration for many years. Guild attorneys have defended
FBI-targeted members of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement,
and the Puerto Rican independence movement. The NLG exposed FBI surveillance,
infiltration and disruption tactics that were detailed during the 1975-76
COINTELPRO hearings. In 1989 the NLG prevailed in a lawsuit on behalf of
several activist organizations, including the Guild, that forced the FBI to
expose the extent to which it had been spying on activist movements. Under the
settlement, the FBI turned over roughly 400,000 pages of its files on the
Guild, which are now available at the Tamiment Library at New York University.

What
if FBI Agents or Police Contact Me?

What
if an agent or police officer comes to the door?

Do
not invite the agents or police into your home. Do not answer any questions.
Tell the agent that you do not wish to talk with him or her. You can state that
your lawyer will contact them on your behalf. You can do this by stepping
outside and pulling the door behind you so that the interior of your home or
office is not visible, getting their contact information or business cards and
then returning inside. They should cease questioning after this. If the agent
or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the
information to your attorney. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly
harmless or insignificant, may be used against you or others in the future.
Lying to or misleading a federal agent is a crime. The more you speak, the more
opportunity for federal law enforcement to find something you said (even if not
intentionally) false and assert that you lied to a federal officer.

Do
I have to answer questions?

You
have the constitutional right to remain silent. It is not a crime to refuse to
answer questions. You do not have to talk to anyone, even if you have been
arrested or are in jail. You should affirmatively and unambiguously state that
you wish to remain silent and that you wish to consult an attorney. Once you
make the request to speak to a lawyer, do not say anything else. The Supreme
Court recently ruled that answering law enforcement questions may be taken as a
waiver of your right to remain silent, so it is important that you assert your
rights and maintain them. Only a judge can order you to answer questions. There
is one exception: some states have "stop and identify" statutes which
require you to provide identity information or your name if you have been
detained on reasonable suspicion that you may have committed a crime. A lawyer
in your state can advise you of the status of these requirements where you
reside.

Do
I have to give my name?

As
above, in some states you can be detained or arrested for merely refusing to
give your name. And in any state, police do not always follow the law, and
refusing to give your name may make them suspicious or more hostile and lead to
your arrest, even without just cause, so use your judgment. Giving a false name
could in some circumstances be a crime.

Do
I need a lawyer?

You
have the right to talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to answer
questions from law enforcement. It is a good idea to talk to a lawyer if you
are considering answering any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer
present during any interview. The lawyer's job is to protect your rights. Once
you tell the agent that you want to talk to a lawyer, he or she should stop
trying to question you and should make any further contact through your lawyer.
If you do not have a lawyer, you can still tell the officer you want to speak to
one before answering questions. Remember to get the name, agency and telephone
number of any investigator who visits you, and give that information to your
lawyer. The government does not have to provide you with a free lawyer unless
you are charged with a crime, but the NLG or another organization may be able
to help you find a lawyer for free or at a reduced rate.

If
I refuse to answer questions or say I want a lawyer, won't it seem like I have
something to hide?

Anything
you say to law enforcement can be used against you and others. You can never
tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information might be used or manipulated
to hurt you or someone else. That is why the right not to talk is a fundamental
right under the Constitution. Keep in mind that although law enforcement agents
are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining
silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain
silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and "I do not consent
to a search." It is a common practice for law enforcement agents to try to
get you to waive your rights by telling you that if you have nothing to hide
you would talk or that talking would "just clear things up." The fact
is, if they are questioning you, they are looking to incriminate you or someone
you may know, or they are engaged in political intelligence gathering. You
should feel comfortable standing firm in protection and defense of your rights
and refusing to answer questions.

Can
agents search my home or office?

You
do not have to let police or agents into your home or office unless they have
and produce a valid search warrant. A search warrant is a written court order
that allows the police to conduct a specified search. Interfering with a
warrantless search probably will not stop it and you might get arrested. But
you should say "I do not consent to a search," and call a criminal
defense lawyer or the NLG. You should be aware that a roommate or guest can
legally consent to a search of your house if the police believe that person has
the authority to give consent, and your employer can consent to a search of
your workspace without your permission.

What
if agents have a search warrant?

If
you are present when agents come for the search, you can ask to see the
warrant. The warrant must specify in detail the places to be searched and the
people or things to be taken away. Tell the agents you do not consent to the
search so that they cannot go beyond what the warrant authorizes. Ask if you
are allowed to watch the search; if you are allowed to, you should. Take notes,
including names, badge numbers, what agency each officer is from, where they
searched and what they took. If others are present, have them act as witnesses
to watch carefully what is happening. If the agents ask you to give them
documents, your computer, or anything else, look to see if the item is listed
in the warrant. If it is not, do not consent to them taking it without talking
to a lawyer. You do not have to answer questions. Talk to a lawyer first.
(Note: If agents present an arrest warrant, they may only perform a cursory
visual search of the premises to see if the person named in the arrest warrant
is present.)

Do
I have to answer questions if I have been arrested?

No.
If you are arrested, you do not have to answer any questions. You should
affirmatively and unambiguously state that you wish to assert your right to
remain silent. Ask for a lawyer right away. Do not say anything else. Repeat to
every officer who tries to talk to or question you that you wish to remain
silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. You should always talk to a
lawyer before you decide to answer any questions.

What
if I speak to government agents anyway?

Even
if you have already answered some questions, you can refuse to answer other
questions until you have a lawyer. If you find yourself talking, stop. Assert
that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer.

What
if the police stop me on the street?

Ask
if you are free to go. If the answer is yes, consider just walking away. If the
police say you are not under arrest, but are not free to go, then you are being
detained. The police can pat down the outside of your clothing if they have
reason to suspect you might be armed and dangerous. If they search any more
than this, say clearly, "I do not consent to a search." They may keep
searching anyway. If this happens, do not resist because you can be charged
with assault or resisting arrest. You do not have to answer any questions. You
do not have to open bags or any closed container. Tell the officers you do not
consent to a search of your bags or other property.

What
if police or agents stop me in my car?

Keep
your hands where the police can see them. If you are driving a vehicle, you
must show your license, registration and, in some states, proof of insurance.
You do not have to consent to a search. But the police may have legal grounds
to search your car anyway. Clearly state that you do not consent. Officers may
separate passengers and drivers from each other to question them, but no one
has to answer any questions.

What
if I am treated badly by the police or the FBI?

Write
down the officer's badge number, name or other identifying information. You
have a right to ask the officer for this information. Try to find witnesses and
their names and phone numbers. If you are injured, seek medical attention and
take pictures of the injuries as soon as you can. Call a lawyer as soon as
possible.

What
if the police or FBI threaten me with a grand jury subpoena if I don't answer
their questions?

A
grand jury subpoena is a written order for you to go to court and testify about
information you may have. It is common for the FBI to threaten you with a
subpoena to get you to talk to them. If they are going to subpoena you, they
will do so anyway. You should not volunteer to speak just because you are
threatened with a subpoena. You should consult a lawyer.

What
if I receive a grand jury subpoena?

Grand
jury proceedings are not the same as testifying at an open court trial. You are
not allowed to have a lawyer present (although one may wait in the hallway and
you may ask to consult with him or her after each question) and you may be asked
to answer questions about your activities and associations. Because of the
witness's limited rights in this situation, the government has frequently used
grand jury subpoenas to gather information about activists and political
organizations. It is common for the FBI to threaten activists with a subpoena
in order to elicit information about their political views and activities and
those of their associates. There are legal grounds for stopping
("quashing") subpoenas, and receiving one does not necessarily mean
that you are suspected of a crime. If you do receive a subpoena, call the NLG
National Hotline at 888-NLG-ECOL (888-654-3265) or call a criminal defense
attorney immediately.

The
government regularly uses grand jury subpoena power to investigate and seek
evidence related to politically-active individuals and social movements. This
practice is aimed at prosecuting activists and, through intimidation and
disruption, discouraging continued activism.

Federal
grand jury subpoenas are served in person. If you receive one, it is critically
important that you retain the services of an attorney, preferably one who
understands your goals and, if applicable, understands the nature of your
political work, and has experience with these issues. Most lawyers are trained
to provide the best legal defense for their client, often at the expense of
others. Beware lawyers who summarily advise you to cooperate with grand juries,
testify against friends, or cut off contact with your friends and political
activists. Cooperation usually leads to others being subpoenaed and
investigated. You also run the risk of being charged with perjury, a felony,
should you omit any pertinent information or should there be inconsistencies in
your testimony.

Frequently
prosecutors will offer "use immunity," meaning that the prosecutor is
prohibited from using your testimony or any leads from it to bring charges
against you. If a subsequent prosecution is brought, the prosecutor bears the
burden of proving that all of its evidence was obtained independent of the
immunized testimony. You should be aware, however, that they will use anything
you say to manipulate associates into sharing more information about you by
suggesting that you have betrayed confidences.

In
front of a grand jury you can "take the Fifth" (exercise your right
to remain silent). However, the prosecutor may impose immunity on you, which
strips you of Fifth Amendment protection and subjects you to the possibility of
being cited for contempt and jailed if you refuse to answer further. In front
of a grand jury you have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel, although you can
consult with a lawyer outside the grand jury room after each question.

What
if I don't cooperate with the grand jury?

If
you receive a grand jury subpoena and elect to not cooperate, you may be held
in civil contempt. There is a chance that you may be jailed or imprisoned for
the length of the grand jury in an effort to coerce you to cooperate. Regular
grand juries sit for a basic term of 18 months, which can be extended up to a
total of 24 months. It is lawful to hold you in order to coerce your
cooperation, but unlawful to hold you as a means of punishment. In rare
instances you may face criminal contempt charges.

What
If I Am Not a Citizen and the DHS Contacts Me?

The
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is now part of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and has been renamed and reorganized into: 1. The
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS); 2. The Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection (CBP); and 3. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). All three bureaus will be referred to as DHS for the
purposes of this pamphlet.

?
Assert your rights. If you do not demand your rights or if you sign papers
waiving your rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may deport you
before you see a lawyer or an immigration judge. Never sign anything without
reading, understanding and knowing the consequences of signing it.

?
Talk to a lawyer. If possible, carry with you the name and telephone number of
an immigration lawyer who will take your calls. The immigration laws are hard
to understand and there have been many recent changes. DHS will not explain
your options to you. As soon as you encounter a DHS agent, call your attorney.
If you can't do it right away, keep trying. Always talk to an immigration
lawyer before leaving the U.S. Even some legal permanent residents can be
barred from returning.

Based
on today's laws, regulations and DHS guidelines, non-citizens usually have the
following rights, no matter what their immigration status. This information may
change, so it is important to contact a lawyer. The following rights apply to
non-citizens who are inside the U.S. Non-citizens at the border who are trying
to enter the U.S. do not have all the same rights.

Do
I have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any DHS questions or
signing any DHS papers?

Yes.
You have the right to call a lawyer or your family if you are detained, and you
have the right to be visited by a lawyer in detention. You have the right to
have your attorney with you at any hearing before an immigration judge. You do
not have the right to a government-appointed attorney for immigration
proceedings, but if you have been arrested, immigration officials must show you
a list of free or low cost legal service providers.

Should
I carry my green card or other immigration papers with me?

If
you have documents authorizing you to stay in the U.S., you must carry them
with you. Presenting false or expired papers to DHS may lead to deportation or
criminal prosecution. An unexpired green card, I-94, Employment Authorization
Card, Border Crossing Card or other papers that prove you are in legal status
will satisfy this requirement. If you do not carry these papers with you, you
could be charged with a crime. Always keep a copy of your immigration papers
with a trusted family member or friend who can fax them to you, if need be.
Check with your immigration lawyer about your specific case.

Am
I required to talk to government officers about my immigration history?

If
you are undocumented, out of status, a legal permanent resident (green card
holder), or a citizen, you do not have to answer any questions about your
immigration history. (You may want to consider giving your name; see above for
more information about this.) If you are not in any of these categories, and
you are being questioned by a DHS or FBI agent, then you may create problems
with your immigration status if you refuse to provide information requested by
the agent. If you have a lawyer, you can tell the agent that your lawyer will
answer questions on your behalf. If answering questions could lead the agent to
information that connects you with criminal activity, you should consider
refusing to talk to the agent at all.

If
I am arrested for immigration violations, do I have the right to a hearing
before an immigration judge to defend myself against deportation charges?

Yes.
In most cases only an immigration judge can order you deported. But if you
waive your rights or take "voluntary departure," agreeing to leave
the country, you could be deported without a hearing. If you have criminal
convictions, were arrested at the border, came to the U.S. through the visa
waiver program or have been ordered deported in the past, you could be deported
without a hearing. Contact a lawyer immediately to see if there is any relief
for you.

Can
I call my consulate if I am arrested?

Yes.
Non-citizens arrested in the U.S. have the right to call their consulate or to
have the police tell the consulate of your arrest. The police must let your
consulate visit or speak with you if consular officials decide to do so. Your
consulate might help you find a lawyer or offer other help. You also have the
right to refuse help from your consulate.

What
happens if I give up my right to a hearing or leave the U.S. before the hearing
is over?

You
could lose your eligibility for certain immigration benefits, and you could be
barred from returning to the U.S. for a number of years. You should always talk
to an immigration lawyer before you decide to give up your right to a hearing.

What
should I do if I want to contact DHS?

Always
talk to a lawyer before contacting DHS, even on the phone. Many DHS officers
view "enforcement" as their primary job and will not explain all of
your options to you.

What
Are My Rights at Airports?

IMPORTANT
NOTE: It is illegal for law enforcement to perform any stops, searches,
detentions or removals based solely on your race, national origin, religion,
sex or ethnicity.

If
I am entering the U.S. with valid travel papers can a U.S. customs agent stop
and search me?

Yes.
Customs agents have the right to stop, detain and search every person and item.

Can
my bags or I be searched after going through metal detectors with no problem or
after security sees that my bags do not contain a weapon?

Yes.
Even if the initial screen of your bags reveals nothing suspicious, the
screeners have the authority to conduct a further search of you or your bags.

If
I am on an airplane, can an airline employee interrogate me or ask me to get
off the plane?

The
pilot of an airplane has the right to refuse to fly a passenger if he or she
believes the passenger is a threat to the safety of the flight. The pilot's decision
must be reasonable and based on observations of you, not stereotypes.

What
If I Am Under 18?

Do
I have to answer questions?

No.
Minors too have the right to remain silent. You cannot be arrested for refusing
to talk to the police, probation officers, or school officials, except in some
states you may have to give your name if you have been detained.

What
if I am detained?

If
you are detained at a community detention facility or Juvenile Hall, you
normally must be released to a parent or guardian. If charges are filed against
you, in most states you are entitled to counsel (just like an adult) at no
cost.

Do
I have the right to express political views at school?

Public
school students generally have a First Amendment right to politically organize
at school by passing out leaflets, holding meetings, etc., as long as those
activities are not disruptive and do not violate legitimate school rules. You
may not be singled out based on your politics, ethnicity or religion.

Can
my backpack or locker be searched?

School
officials can search students' backpacks and lockers without a warrant if they
reasonably suspect that you are involved in criminal activity or carrying drugs
or weapons. Do not consent to the police or school officials searching your property,
but do not physically resist or you may face criminal charges.

Disclaimer

This
booklet is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact an attorney if
you have been visited by the FBI or other law enforcement officials. You should
also alert your relatives, friends, co-workers and others so that they will be
prepared if they are contacted as well.

The
following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's

work
since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown

on
Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l

Al-Awda
Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected

over
the past nine years.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl

Support
Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!

Al-Awda,
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial

support
to carry out its work.

To
submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to

http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html

and
follow the simple instructions.

Thank
you for your generosity!

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D.
VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:

[Some
of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:

http://bauaw.blogspot.com/
or bauaw.org ...bw]

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Checkpoint - Jasiri X

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6Y6LSjulU

Published on Jan 28, 2014

"Checkpoint" is based on the
oppression and discrimination Jasiri X witnessed firsthand during his
recent trip to Palestine and Israel "Checkpoint" is produced by Agent of
Change, and directed by Haute Muslim. Download "Checkpoint" at https://jasirix.bandcamp.com/track/ch....

LYRICS
Journal of the hard times tales from the dark side
Evidence of the settlements on my hard drive
Man I swear my heart died at the end of that car ride
When I saw that checkpoint welcome to apartheid
Soldiers wear military green at the checkpoint
Automatic guns that's machine at the checkpoint
Tavors not m16s at the checkpoint
Fingers on the trigger you'll get leaned at the checkpoint
Little children grown adults or teens at the checkpoint
All ya papers better be clean at the checkpoint
You gotta but your finger on the screen at the checkpoint
And pray that red light turns green at the check point

If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint

Separation walls that's surrounding the checkpoint
On top is barbwire like a crown on the checkpoint
Better have ya permits if your found at the checkpoint
Gunmen on the tower aiming down at the checkpoint
The idea is to keep you in fear of the checkpoint
You enter through the cage in the rear of the checkpoint
It feels like prison on a tier at the check point
I'd rather be anywhere but here at this checkpoint
Nelson Mandela wasn't blind to the check point
He stood for free Palestine not a check point
Support BDS don't give a dime to the checkpoint
This is international crime at the checkpoint
Arabs get treated like dogs at the checkpoint
Cause discrimination is the law at the checkpoint
Criminalized without a cause at the checkpoint
I'm just telling you what I saw at the checkpoint
Soldiers got bad attitudes at the checkpoint
Condescending and real rude at the checkpoint
Don't look em in they eyes when they move at the checkpoint
They might strip a man or woman nude at the checkpoint
Soldiers might blow you out of ya shoes at the checkpoint
Gas you up and then light the fuse at the checkpoint
Everyday you stand to be accused at the checkpoint
Each time your life you could lose at the checkpoint

If Martin Luther King had a dream of the checkpoint
He wake with loud screams from the scenes at the checkpoint
It's Malcolm X by any means at the check point
Imagine if you daily routine was the checkpoint

At the airport in Tel Aviv is a checkpoint
They pulled over our taxi at the checkpoint
Passport visa ID at the checkpoint
Soldiers going all through my things at the checkpoint
Said I was high risk security at the checkpoint
Because of the oppression I see at the checkpoint
Occupation in the 3rd degree at the checkpoint
All a nigga wanna do is leave fuck a checkpoint

On
Gun Control, Martin Luther King, the Deacons of Defense and the history of
Black Liberation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzYKisvBN1o&feature=player_embedded

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Fukushima
Never Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU-Z4VLDGxU

"Fukushima,
Never Again" tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in
north east Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the
Japanese government.

This
is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power
experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of
the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens
were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order
to test their communities to find out if they were in danger.

The
government said contaminated soil in children's school grounds was safe and
then

when
the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the
government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds.

It
also relays how the nuclear energy program for "peaceful atoms" was brought
to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal
cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which
built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear
plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the
Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the
voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster
and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the
world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new
plants and government subsidies. This film breaks

the
information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and
around the world that Fukushima is over.

Production
Of Labor Video Project

P.O.
Box 720027

San
Francisco, CA 94172

www.laborvideo.org

lvpsf@laborvideo.org

For
information on obtaining the video go to:

www.fukushimaneveragain.com

(415)282-1908

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1000
year of war through the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiG8neU4_bs&feature=share

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Anatomy
of a Massacre - Afganistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BnRc11aug&feature=player_embedded

Afghans
accuse multiple soldiers of pre-meditated murder

To
see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures

Follow
us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter

(http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)

The
recent massacre of 17 civilians by a rogue US soldier has been shrouded in

mystery.
But through unprecedented access to those involved, this report

confronts
the accusations that Bales didn't act alone.

"They
came into my room and they killed my family". Stories like this are common

amongst
the survivors in Aklozai and Najiban. As are the shocking accusations

that
Sergeant Bales was not acting alone. Even President Karzai has announced

"one
man can not do that". Chief investigator, General Karimi, is suspicious

that
despite being fully armed, Bales freely left his base without raising

alarm.
"How come he leaves at night and nobody is aware? Every time we have

weapon
accountability and personal accountability." These are just a few of the

questions
the American army and government are yet to answer. One thing however

is
very clear, the massacre has unleashed a wave of grief and outrage which

means
relations in Kandahar will be tense for years to come: "If I could lay my

hands
on those infidels, I would rip them apart with my bare hands."

A
Film By SBS

Distributed
By Journeyman Pictures

April
2012

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Photo
of George Zimmerman, in 2005 photo, left, and in a more recent photo.